Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration sued the New York City Council on Wednesday over its newly enacted bill to pay paraprofessionals one-time $10,000 payments, saying it both runs afoul of the state law that restricts public-sector wage increases to collective bargaining and could set an expensive precedent. 

The Council passed the bill last month with a veto-proof majority, and it lapsed into law Wednesday without the mayor making any attempt at a veto, which councilmembers likely would have overridden. 

Mamdani spokesperson Matt Rauschenbach said the legislation “undermines collective bargaining and sets a dangerous precedent: allowing politicians to bypass workers and their unions and dictate the terms of employment themselves.

“We will not allow the political process to replace the collective bargaining table,” he said in a statement that cited the city’s financial challenges.

The suit argues the bill was beyond the Council’s authority and “set a perilous and unlawful precedent with huge fiscal consequences for the [Department of Education] and the city — and, by extension, the tax-paying public.

“If the Paraprofessional Pay Bill is allowed to stand, other public employees will undoubtedly seek their own ‘stabilization’ payments from the Council, also outside of the collective bargaining process, or otherwise use Council proposals for such payments as leverage over that process,” the suit alleges.

Following the July vote, Mamdani said the bill was “in direct violation of the Taylor Law.” The nearly 60-year-old law covers most public employees in New York and gives them the right to organize and bargain for wage increases and other benefits.  

A City Council spokesperson shared a joint statement from Speaker Julie Menin and Councilmember Carmen De La Rosa, who introduced the bill, saying the legislature “will vigorously defend the law.

“Every member of the Council, in a unanimous and bipartisan vote, supported the RESPECT Check Act because it is unacceptable that paraprofessionals who support some of our highest-need students are earning as little as $32,000 a year,” they said in the statement. “This law is not only the right thing to do, it is also the fiscally responsible thing to do, helping address the staffing shortages that contribute to the city’s $1.5 billion in Carter case costs.”

Paraprofessionals are teacher aides who work with students with disabilities and special needs. Carter cases are civil lawsuits against the city seeking reimbursement for private special-education tuition and are typically filed when families allege their child’s needs were not met in the public school system.

The United Federation of Teachers union earlier Wednesday celebrated the bill becoming law, saying it would help low-paid paraprofessionals. In a statement after the lawsuit was filed, union president Michael Mulgrew said the Council was careful to word the bill so it wouldn’t violate the Taylor Law. 

“We hope the mayor will work with us, keep his promise, respect the paraprofessionals and solve this injustice,” he said in a statement.

Starting pay for city paraprofessionals is around $33,000 a year, and the top pay is more than $56,000 within 15 years, according to the UFT. 

Mulgrew and Menin said the pay increases were necessary due to a citywide shortage of around 1,600 paraprofessionals. Without these aides, Chalkbeat previously reported, some students couldn’t get to school.

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New York City needs to build 700,000 new housing units over the next 10 years, the Mamdani administration said Wednesday, a figure larger than previous estimates. Meeting that goal would require the city to hit very ambitious construction targets.

The report, the first to be issued under a 2023 City Council law requiring regular housing estimates, also reiterates the administration’s goal of 200,000 new, below-market affordable apartments over the next decade, which it set in its “Block by Block” policy announced earlier this year. 

Construction in low-density neighborhoods that have not built much affordable housing will be key. The report notes it will soon assign non-binding growth targets to neighborhoods and ask lagging areas to contribute to meeting New York’s burgeoning demand.

This fall, under charter changes approved by voters last year, the city is required to identify the 12 neighborhoods that have built the least affordable housing. Affordable projects in those areas now get a 90-day review process — instead of seven months — and can be approved by the City Planning Commission without a vote by the Council.

“This new report sets an ambitious citywide target for new housing production that recognizes the scale of the housing crisis,” said Brendan Cheney, director of operations and policy for the New York Housing Conference, an advocacy group. 

“And the targets for housing growth in all neighborhoods are also pretty ambitious, especially lower density and lower growth neighborhoods,” Cheney said. “It looks like it is really pushing all communities to add housing and contribute to the solution.”

Meanwhile, other groups used the announcement to push their key priorities.

The New York Apartment Association issued a press release calling attention to its plan to provide a rent increase for the 60,000 apartments currently vacant because landlords say they can’t afford to make them habitable after a long-term tenant leaves.

The Real Estate Board of New York focused on that issue and the 485-x property tax break whose requirements for union labor on larger projects has resulted in developers building only 99-unit buildings.

If New York is serious about producing 700,000 new homes, policymakers must confront the issues still holding housing back, including fixing 485-x and returning vacant rent-regulated apartments to the market,” board President James Whelan said. 

“The question is no longer whether we need more housing,” Whelan added. “The question is whether government is willing to make it possible to build it.”

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The MTA’s plan to convert to a zero-emissions bus fleet by 2040 has hit enough roadblocks that the target date is “in jeopardy” of not being met, a new report from New York state’s top fiscal watchdog warns.

The audit from state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli comes after the MTA acknowledged in June that it had to pump the brakes on ordering hundreds of electric buses because of reliability shortfalls with the green technology.

“The electric buses that we have tested so far have not been up to standards. They break down too frequently,” Janno Lieber, MTA chairperson and chief executive, said Wednesday at an unrelated news conference. “We have put the manufacturer on notice and in order for us to continue purchasing electric buses, we need that reliability standard to be met.”

The 28-page report from DiNapoli’s office notes the MTA committed in 2018 to make its entire fleet of nearly 6,000 buses emissions-free in a little more than two decades, but flags several challenges that could put the 2040 goal out of reach.

The transportation authority has previously estimated the ambitious undertaking of replacing all of its buses could cost close to $12 billion — and require enough power to light up nearly 200,000 homes.

Electric buses first hit city streets in 2018, on the M42 and M50 routes in Manhattan and the B32 route between Williamsburg and Long Island City.

“The MTA has set an ambitious goal to transform the nation’s largest bus fleet to 100% zero-emission,” DiNapoli said in a statement Wednesday. “Unfortunately, this audit identified multiple challenges that have put its 2040 target in jeopardy.”

‘An Industrywide Problem’

The audit cites obstacles including surging costs for electric buses as well as the transportation authority’s reliance on a single manufacturer with limited capacity and a backlog of orders from the MTA and other transit providers. The comptroller’s office noted how the $1.8 million cost of a single articulated bus — the type that bends in the middle — is about 60% more than a diesel bus of comparable size.

The audit also flagged that 75 electric buses in the MTA’s fleet have been in service significantly less than had been projected.

“The [battery-electric buses] at five depots were only able to be put into service less than 60% of the time the MTA anticipated,” the audit said.

Jessie Lazarus, MTA chief of rolling stock, acknowledged as much in June at a board meeting where she outlined how the electric buses now in use have proven less reliable than clean-diesel buses in their first years in operation.

“It’s not unique to the MTA, this is an industrywide problem,” she said at the time. “And that also doesn’t mean that we’re shying away from trying to do something about it.”

Lieber said Wednesday that the transit agency is looking to make use of other low-emissions options, including compressed natural gas, hybrid and low-emissions diesel buses.

“We are on track to improve emissions and we are committed to maintaining the rapid progress on that,” he said. “But it does depend on, ultimately, the electric buses or hydrogen — which we’re also testing — panning out.”

‘NY Should Lead the Path Forward’

The challenges with shifting to a zero-emissions fleet extend beyond service reliability. A 2020 report from the nonprofit Tri-State Transportation Campaign cited how thousands of MTA buses are stored in neighborhoods with “very high,” “high” or “moderate” risk of flooding, according to 2050 flood projections.

Lieber said electrification efforts are ongoing at several locations, including the Jamaica and Grand Avenue bus depots in Queens and the East New York depot in Brooklyn.

“We’re going to continue to get ready, assuming that these electric buses are in fact eventually going to be proven and meet the reliability standards that we require,” he said.

Danny Pearlstein, policy director for the nonprofit Riders Alliance, said the MTA is far from the only transit agency having issues with electric buses. More than 1.1 million riders use MTA buses daily, according to transportation authority data.

“It’s not just a New York problem by any stretch of the imagination, but New York should lead the path forward because more riders here depend on buses,” Pearlstein told The City Reporter. “The U.S. has fallen far behind and the current federal government’s commitment to stranding riders and burning fossil fuels adds insult to injury.”

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A bill guaranteeing paraprofessionals a one-time $10,000 pay bump became law automatically on Wednesday after Mayor Zohran Mamdani declined to sign or veto it.

Paraprofessionals, school aides who typically support students with disabilities, are among the lowest-paid employees of the city’s public school system with starting annual salaries of roughly $33,000.

The teachers union waged a major campaign to win the pay bump through legislation, a push Mamdani supported on the campaign trail. The pay bump — known as the “respect” check — passed without a single dissenting vote in City Council last month.

But after taking office, the mayor suggested the legislation is a “direct violation” of state labor law and any pay increases must be negotiated as part of the traditional collective bargaining process. Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers, vowed an “all-out war” if the mayor tried to derail the bill and has argued it is consistent with state law.

“We are prepared to engage in a legal fight for the RESPECT check and the paraprofessionals who keep our schools running,” union officials wrote in an email to members on Wednesday.

City Hall did not immediately say if they would launch a legal challenge, which would set up a major confrontation with the union. The optics of fighting the bill are complicated for Mamdani because his campaign focused on making the city more affordable. But allowing the legislation to stand could prompt other unions to seek raises through legislation, weakening City Hall’s power to manage labor costs.

The City Council estimates the total cost of the $10,000 payments, issued in four installments between January and August 2027, will be about $324 million. Roughly 25,000 paraprofessionals are eligible in addition to substitute paraprofessionals, whose pay bumps will be prorated based on the number of days they work.

The union argues the pay increases are essential to begin addressing a shortage of roughly 1,600 paraprofessionals. Those vacancies can have severe consequences for students with disabilities, some of whom are not able to ride school buses without an aide.

The legislation has strong support from many paraprofessionals who say they deserve wages that reflect their importance to the school system and must work second or third jobs to make ends meet. Yet others argue the one-time payments aren’t a long-term fix and are frustrated the pay bumps won’t count toward their pensions.

Alex Zimmerman is a senior reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

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A bipartisan group of City Council members excoriated the Mamdani administration on Tuesday for ditching a gripe-filled hearing on the botched rollout of the mayor’s new pied-à-terre tax.

Meanwhile, the number of households the city now admits were wrongfully targeted for the hefty surcharge continued to rise from 1,906 a week ago to 2,318 as of Monday — a 21% spike.

And more property owners who received notices threatening them with the tax joined a lawsuit alleging the administration didn’t do its homework before hitting thousands of home, condo and co-op owners across the five boroughs with the ominous notices.

In May, Mayor Zohran Mamdani persuaded Gov. Kathy Hochul and the state Legislature to approve the new tax to help close a $5.4 billion city budget gap. The measure imposes a surcharge on expensive homes owned and kept largely vacant by out-of-towners, but thousands of real-life New Yorkers were threatened with the new tax if they could not quickly muster the paperwork to prove residency.

The city Department of Finance sent out notices to 17,000 households last month asserting they were subject to the tax, placing the burden on them to prove the targeted properties were not second homes — when the city already had access to some data that could show otherwise.

The department was immediately inundated with applications seeking exemptions from the charges, which could increase a property owner’s tax burden by tens of thousands of dollars. By last week, 4,290 owners had applied. As of Tuesday, that number had more than doubled to 9,884.

Flooded with complaints from constituents, the City Council tried to get more clarity from City Hall on how the administration determined who would get the dreaded notices.

Councilmember Gale Brewer (D-Manhattan), chair of the governmental operations committee, and Linda Lee (D-Queens), chair of the finance committee, asked City Hall to send a representative in person to explain the Finance Department’s protocols.

A Minor Mea Culpa

With Mamdani on vacation upstate, the Council expected to hear from Finance Commissioner Richard Lee. A day before the hearing, the mayor’s office informed Brewer no one from the administration would attend, citing the pending litigation. An hour before the hearing, they sent over a five-page written statement from Lee that provided few details on his department’s methods.

Brewer, who dubbed the event a “strange hearing,” was then forced to read Lee’s statement into the record to an empty witness table. The statement included a partial mea culpa from the finance commissioner: “I understand there are concerns regarding this surcharge. I also understand that there are individuals who received an initial determination letter who may not ultimately owe the surcharge.”

When Brewer finished, her colleagues — both Democrats and Republicans — blasted the mayor for the administration’s no-show performance.

“Regardless of what’s going on in this administration, they should show up,” said Councilmember Eric Dinowitz (D-Bronx).

“They are not here because they don’t want to answer questions,” said Councilmember Vickie Paladino (R-Queens).

“So much for transparency,” complained Councilmember Phil Wong (D-Queens).

The surcharge’s rollout is already the subject of a lawsuit filed in state court by attorney Randy Mastro, a former deputy mayor to both Eric Adams and Rudy Giuliani who received a pied-à-terre notice for his Upper West Side townhouse. On Tuesday, Mastro added to his lawsuit the owners of three more properties who were threatened with the tax.

‘Burdensome Scheme’

That included Kenneth Fishel, who said the Finance Department sent a surcharge notice to another resident in his Park Avenue co-op that the address listed on the notice indicated was actually meant for him. The notice claimed he owed $58,479 on a coop the department had determined was worth $1.46 million.

“Fishel only learned of and obtained a copy of the notice because he ran into his neighbor living 27 floors below him on the elevator,” the lawsuit alleged.

Fishel applied for an exemption but was told that one had already been filed, according to the suit.

“Without relief, Petitioner Fishel will be required to continue navigating the City Respondents’ burdensome scheme in an attempt to obtain an ‘exemption’ from a Surcharge that does not apply to him,” the lawsuit asserted.

The suit is set for a hearing on Aug. 31.

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Brooklyn Cyclones management acknowledged they had failed to pay employees the appropriate amount of tips and reimbursed at least one employee for lost wages, following a recent investigation by The City Reporter.

Just before the Cyclones faced the Jersey Shore BlueClaws last Thursday, team management addressed the findings of the story with staff, according to a recording obtained by The City Reporter.

“We obviously recognize that there was an issue a few months ago,” said Joe Hudson, a manager at Diamond Baseball Holdings. “That being said, if there are still concerns or if there are questions we can talk about it now.”

Spectators are automatically prompted to tip when they purchase a hot dog or beer at Maimonides Park in Coney Island, and concession stands do not accept cash. Yet The City Reporter found workers did not receive any tips on some paychecks, according to a review of 15 pay stubs between May and August from a half-dozen employees. According to New York state law, tips belong to the employees, and all credit card tips must be paid out by the next paycheck.

The Cyclones were sold in 2024 to Diamond Baseball Holdings, which has acquired 40% of all minor league baseball teams in the country in the past five years. This season, the company took over managing the concessions at Maimonides Park from a contractor. 

“Ensuring employees are compensated appropriately remains our top priority. We are continuing the process of verifying and validating accurate tip compensation and have reiterated to our employees our commitment to resolving any discrepancies brought to our attention,” said Lauren Flemming, Vice President of Communications for DBH.

At the staff meeting, multiple employees sought clarification about how tips were pooled and distributed. One employee asked when the tip pooling started, adding “this has been going since February, we wasn’t getting tips from February,” according to the recording. 

Hudson responded that in the first week of June, managers pulled all of the tip data from the first two months of the season to correct any errors from the beginning of the season. He said pooling tips was a way to expand the number of employees eligible to receive compensation from concession tips.

“Moving forward, you should have seen tips pretty regularly. And if there are concerns about specific tips,” Hudson added, “we’re committed to making sure we deal with each one of you individually and making sure that you have the visibility that you need.”

Melissa Sampson, who works as a seasonal cashier at the stadium, wrote to Hudson about discrepancies in her tips following the meeting. In a reply reviewed by The City Reporter, Hudson acknowledged she was missing tips from both a week in late June and the week of July 8. In total, DBH owed her $225 in missing tips from those two weeks, according to the email.

Yet, some stadium employees who are eligible for tips still did not receive any tips on their most recent paycheck. The City Reporter reviewed two pay stubs dated Aug. 14 that showed no compensation from tips.

One of the employees told the City Reporter she had raised the issue with a manager but had not received a response yet.

DBH did not immediately return a request for comment about whether it would order a wider review of discrepancies about how it paid employees tips.

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Amazon and more than a dozen of its subcontractors in New York City and the suburbs face union allegations they flouted a state law that protects employees from mass layoffs or closures.

A complaint submitted to the state Labor Department on Tuesday by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters charges that Amazon and 13 subcontractors violated the state’s WARN Act by failing to give the megaretailer’s delivery drivers at least 90 days’ notice of their impending terminations.

The complaints were filed on behalf of former workers who claim their shops were shut down with no warning between September 2023 and October 2025. The Teamsters estimate more than 1,300 workers were impacted by the closures.

The union also identified cases where Amazon subcontractors allegedly sent layoff notices after the layoff or closure date.

The move comes amid growing support in the City Council for a bill that would force Amazon to directly employ the army of drivers and depot workers who currently work for local subcontractors to deliver an estimated 2 million packages each day across the five boroughs. Mayor Zohran Mamdani recently came out in support of the bill, which Amazon and business groups vehemently oppose.

Among fired workers covered by the Tuesday complaint are Latrice Johnson, who said she was laid off from a job she “loved” as a delivery driver servicing Queens and Brooklyn in August 2025. She said she was at home on her day off when a group chat of her coworkers began blowing up: Managers had apparently told people who clocked in at the sprawling Amazon garage in Maspeth, Queens, known as DBK4 that the company would be shutting down immediately. 

Official word of the mass layoff came several days later, when Johnson received a boilerplate letter from Cornucopia Logistics, the Amazon subcontractor where she worked for two years. The state Labor Department’s WARN notice portal lists Aug. 20, 2025 as the garage’s closure date, but Aug. 26 as the notice date.

“It was devastating. I was looking forward to going back in and making next week’s paycheck,” Johnson, a single mother, told The City Reporter. “You call me a top driver two months ago, and now you’re giving me the boot?”

The Teamsters’ complaint lists Johnson’s former employer and a dozen others, as well as Amazon itself, among the companies it alleges flouted the WARN Act. The union estimates affected workers could be owed up to $11 million in back pay.

MORE: UPS Tops List of Bus-Lane Blockers Caught on Camera Last Year

In a statement, Amazon spokesperson Steve Kelly dismissed the complaint as bluster from the Teamsters. He reiterated that the impacted drivers were not Amazon employees, and that the tech giant bears no responsibility for its subcontractors’ operations, including “decisions about whether to close their businesses.”

The subcontractors, Kelly said, “are independent small businesses. They make their own decisions when it comes to hiring, fleet management, capacity planning and route assignments — and whether they want to work with other companies besides Amazon.”

Kelly noted it is the subcontractors’ responsibility “to comply with all applicable WARN laws” when they close their doors — and to give Amazon a heads-up, too.

In Amazon’s parlance, the subcontractors are known as “delivery service partners,” or DSPs.

“We ask DSPs to keep us informed so that if they do cease operations, we’re able to connect impacted individuals with other DSPs in the area who may be hiring and to ensure continuity of delivery services for customers,” Kelly said.

Spokespeople for Cornucopia and other subcontractors did not respond to requests for comment.

New York’s 90-Day Rule

In New York, private businesses with 50 or more full-time employees must give 90 days’ notice of closures or mass layoffs to employees and the state Department of Labor. Businesses that do not provide notice may be required to pay back wages and benefits to employees and pay a civil penalty.

Last year, the shuttered news outlet The Messenger agreed to pay $4.5 million to settle a federal class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of nearly 300 staff who claimed they’d been laid off without warning. 

Amazon has for years insisted the workers delivering its packages for the company — who drive Amazon-branded vehicles, wear Amazon-branded vests and rely on Amazon for roadside support — are not actually its employees. In New York, Amazon’s delivery fleet is subcontracted by more than 40 delivery service partners, an arrangement critics say shields the tech giant from liability in case of accidents, wage theft complaints and collective bargaining.

In a six-page letter affixed to the complaint, Randy Korgan, the director of the Teamsters’ Amazon division, and the president of the union’s New York council, Thomas Gesualdi, urged the state Labor Department and the city’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection to investigate Amazon and the workers’ direct employers for the alleged WARN Act violations and to “open enforcement proceedings where appropriate.”

A spokesperson for the state Labor Department said the complaint was being reviewed.

City Hall spokesperson Cassio Mendoza said in a statement that the Teamsters’ allegations “underscore the fact that subcontracting by companies like Amazon has become a way to outsource labor and accountability, leaving last-mile delivery drivers with unstable incomes and dangerous working conditions while making our streets less safe.”

The union is the leading force pushing the City Council to pass a bill that would force Amazon to directly hire delivery workers.

Amazon and business groups claim the bill, known as the Delivery Protection Act, will kneecap small businesses and lead to thousands of lost jobs. Representatives for Amazon have said the company may consider pulling out of New York entirely if the law passes.

The bill, introduced by Councilmember Tiffany Cabán of Queens, is backed by 34 lawmakers and Mamdani but has yet to be brought to a full vote.

Records show Amazon has bankrolled a campaign against the bill to the tune of more than $5 million, New York Focus reported.

“New Yorkers should not be forced to subsidize corporate profits with less safe streets and more precarious jobs,” Mamdani said in a statement last week formally throwing his support behind Cabán’s bill. “It’s time to end the subcontracting model that puts profits over people and build an economy that works for working New Yorkers.”

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Mayor Zohran Mamdani has frequently spoken about his hopes of streamlining city government, cutting through the red tape and bureaucratic roadblocks that stymie progress.

According to his Commission on Government Efficiency, one place he could focus is the thousands of data-heavy reports city agencies are legally required to publish on a regular basis. These reports — usually mandated by City Council bills aimed at increasing transparency and oversight — have the agencies disclose their performance on all sorts of metrics, across all kinds of programs and services.

Many of the reporting requirements are well-intentioned, but create unnecessary burdens on agency staff, bog down city operations and duplicate disclosures, the commission’s final report from late July found. It said an average of more than 80 reporting laws were passed or updated each year from 2020 through 2025, while a city Department of Records and Information Services portal showed more than 2,000 separate, mostly recurring reporting requirements. And a survey COGE conducted among all city agencies found more than 125,000 staff hours are spent annually on reports, generating significant costs.

“These reporting requirements continuously grow, imposing an ever-increasing strain on agency resources, as agencies struggle to keep up with writing, coordinating and timely submitting all mandatory reports,” the commission wrote. “Each of these reports necessitates staff time and energy that may be better spent on implementing policies, rather than writing about them.”

‘There’s a Disconnect’

COGE isn’t alone in raising the issue, long a source of complaints from some good-government groups, agency staff and civic watchdogs.

Tal Roded, a data scientist for LinkedIn who runs a data-focused Substack called NYCuriosity, this month released a Council “obligations tracker” that culled through every local law enacted since 2014 and identified the various tasks they assign to each agency. His research found laws passed over the last 12 years created roughly 8,300 obligations from 2,100 laws, including about 1,550 required reports, or about a fifth of all the tasks.

Nearly 850 of the reports recur at least once per year, according to Roded’s analysis — meaning the Council established about 70 such requirements each year on average. The Department of Education had the most reporting obligations, at 136, followed by the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, at 89, and the NYPD, at 79, his tracker shows.

As a member of Manhattan Community Board 3, which covers the East Village, the Lower East Side and Chinatown, Roded said he routinely heard from elected officials who “love to brag about all the legislation they passed,” even as government operations often seemed sluggish.

He said he started to think: “How is everything not fixed if there’s all these great bills being passed all the time on the city and state level?” So he created and released a fiscal impact tracker on bills before widening his reach to include agency duties that don’t necessarily have an upfront cost.

“With a lot of this legislation, there’s a disconnect between the legislator talking about what they passed and the agency or the body being tasked with carrying out this legislation,” Roded told The City Reporter in an interview.

A Potential Solution — For Now Unused

Mamdani’s COGE approved five ballot proposals for the November election that seek to improve different parts of city government, but none of the measures target the reams of agency reporting requirements. The commission, however, did recommend a path for alleviating these administrative burdens: strengthening an obscure city entity called the Report and Advisory Board Review Commission, which goes over required reports to determine which can be waived or removed.

This panel, housed in the Mayor’s Office of Operations, was formed through a ballot measure through a 2010 charter revision commission. But RABRC has eliminated only 28 reports since 2012, according to COGE, and its last public meeting was in December 2024.  

“The mechanism is there, but it’s not being used,” Roded said.

Mayoral spokesperson Jimmy Wyderko didn’t directly address RABRC’s role in streamlining city operations, but said in a statement that “COGE’s advisory board will continue to bring forward new ideas and work with partners across government to cut through bureaucracy and deliver the services New Yorkers deserve.” The efficiency commission will transition to an advisory board after the general election to counsel Mamdani on ongoing reforms, according to his office.

Grace Rauh, executive director of the nonprofit Citizens Union, said her organization hoped RABRC could reconvene to take a more thorough look at potentially unnecessary reporting requirements, instead of allowing them to snowball.

“Often the go-to solution is, ‘We need more information, so we’re going to require this city agency to release an annual report tracking this problem, so we can better address it,’” she said. “I can appreciate that instinct — we need data to better understand a problem. But when we keep piling more and more requirements on top of city agencies, it becomes really untenable.”

The Goldilocks Question

Testifying before COGE this summer, government watchdog group Reinvent Albany suggested limits on new reporting bills from the Council — especially one-time reports and reports on information that isn’t critical to the public.

“We’d rather see the Council use more oversight hearings, informal information requests of agencies and actually utilize its subpoena power, when necessary, to gain information from city agencies, rather than pass more laws requiring reports,” Alex Camarda, senior policy adviser at the nonprofit, said in testimony submitted for a July 13 hearing.

The City Council’s Compliance Division, which tracks reports required by law, reached out to city agencies this year to get feedback on specific requirements, and councilmembers are considering legislation based on what they hear, according to a Council official. 

“Reporting requirements in local laws allow the Council, members of the media and general public to understand how well city agencies are carrying out their responsibilities,” Rendy Desamours, a spokesperson for Council Speaker Julie Menin, said in a statement, noting the legislature has repealed some reports, task forces and pilot programs. “These reports provide the basis for oversight hearings, spur policy changes and measure the success of the city’s efforts.”

Paul Wolf, president emeritus of the watchdog New York Coalition for Open Government, said there should be a middle ground between overloading agencies with reporting requirements and withholding potentially revelatory information.

“The best solution to these issues is for government agencies to proactively post as much information online as possible in ways that are easily accessible,” he said.

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Chrissy, Katie and Harry take a summer week to consider Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s political winning streak as a new poll shows he’s more popular now than when he was elected mayor, and to note what his approach does, and does not, have in common with the one then-new Mayor Eric Adams took just four years ago.

Then, Katie talks with Mike Flynn, Mamdani’s Transportation Commissioner, about his approach to the job, and much more:

“The work that we do is so tangible, especially in New York where the streets are our front yard, basically, and something that touches everybody every day in one way or another. You’re going to feel changes to your streets. Obviously, those elicit a lot of strong feelings and opinions and I get that, and I think that’s why doing community engagement, really hearing from communities and letting people be heard, is so critical to our work. Not only because it’s the right thing to do, but I think ultimately, in the long run, it guarantees success by getting buy-in, by making sure we’re considering the key issues.

“It needs to be done sort of with some direction. We still have our overall policy goals. We know we want to move busses faster. We know we want to ultimately eliminate traffic fatalities. We know that we want to support the most disadvantaged New Yorkers. We know we want to make it easier to do business in New York City. So these are all kind of our north star. And when we do community engagement, when we talk to communities, we need to keep the focus on the outcomes [and] where we need to get to, and let’s work together to figure out the best way to get there. But it can’t be used as something that just derails good ideas, or if it’s a venue only for the loudest voices to be heard.”

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This story was originally published by Documented. Sign up for their newsletter at documentedny.com/newsletter.

At Fleur de Lis Beauty & Esthetics in Flatbush, Brooklyn, clients typically arrive with an appointment. But in the nearly 10 years the luxury medical spa has been in the community, co-owner Wendy Jules says daily walk-ins weren’t unusual.

“You would get like at least five to 10 people come in and say, ‘What services do you offer over in the neighborhood’ or ‘We’re visiting from out of town,’” said Jules.

In recent months, those casual drop-ins have become much less common. In July, Jules said there were weeks when only about four people stopped in — a drastic change, especially in a neighborhood where summer typically brings more people outside.

“You can definitely see there’s a downturn on the activity in the street,” she said. “There’s usually more people out, more people shopping, or people stopping in to see what services are being offered.”

Jules first noticed the slowdown around the end of May, roughly the same time businesses and residents began sharing concerns about U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity in the area.

“I haven’t seen it because I don’t know if they’re in uniform or not,” she recalled, “but there have been other businesses who would say, ‘Hey, there’s some activity on this street. Stay vigilant and keep your eyes open.’ It’s scary.”

That fear extends beyond Fleur de Lis, and has affected businesses across Flatbush, one of Brooklyn’s largest immigrant communities. The neighborhood is home to roughly 20% of New York City’s Caribbean community and many of its businesses are immigrant-owned. 

A recent survey conducted by the Flatbush-Nostrand Junction Business Improvement District found that 70% of local business owners who responded reported a decrease in foot traffic within the last year. Fifty percent said customers had explicitly raised concerns about ICE and 33% anticipated a likely reduction in their workforce. This has been a trend across New York City, where immigrant-heavy neighborhoods have seen a decline in business and foot traffic, Documented previously reported.

Kenneth Mbonu, president and executive director of the Flatbush-Nostrand Junction Business Improvement District, said those numbers are especially concerning for the corridor’s smallest stores.

“Many of these businesses are brick-and-mortar,so they have a location on the commercial corridor and many of them survive primarily by the foot traffic,” Mbonu told Documented.

More than 80% of businesses in the district are minority-owned, according to Mbonu, who estimates that of those minorities, more than 70% are immigrants.

Many of the businesses, Mbonu said, were already adjusting to seeing fewer customers, a trend that began during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“People were working from home, so the commute to and from work was less,” he explained. “But with those slight declines in foot traffic in the area, that affected a lot of us, more businesses that can’t really transform directly to these kinds of changes.”

Smaller businesses have fewer ways to adapt when customers stop showing up in person, Mbonu said, including limited online and social media infrastructure.

Those pressures have since been compounded by tariffs and heightened immigration enforcement under the Trump administration. The BID survey published in July asked merchants about both.

Among owners willing to disclose financial details, Mbonu said some reported significant losses.

“We saw that a lot of their revenues had dropped by even up to 50%. And that’s a drastic situation for many of these businesses because many of them would not be able to pay their rent, which is usually their biggest cost,” he said.

The decline in foot traffic has led some merchants to begin delivering products directly to people. “But that is an added cost on them,” Mbonu said. “But they don’t have a choice. They have to keep their clients happy.”

Immigration enforcement is also affecting staffing. Mbonu said some merchants have reported multiple ICE raids, while workers with pending immigration applications who are allowed to work still fear leaving home or reporting to their jobs.

“Many of them did not want to take any risk due to the indiscriminate nature of the ICE arrests and so on,” Mbonu said. “It’s just not a healthy environment for a lot of the small businesses and their challenges.”

That fear is not confined to people without legal status, he added.

“Some of them even have green cards or some of them even have their U.S. passports. They’re legal. But just the fear of being arrested in error and finding themselves in Venezuela and having to go through the process could be quite intimidating and frightening,” he said. “So they just don’t want to come out.” More than 170 U.S. citizens were detained by ICE in 2025, according to ProPublica. 

In Flatbush’s large Caribbean immigrant community, these conversations have also included uncertainty surrounding Temporary Protected Status and what changes could mean for Haitians who have spent years building lives in the United States. Many businesses have lost staff or closed because of TPS work authorization terminations, as Documented previously reported.

For Jules, a child of Haitian immigrants, the end of TPS work authorization has hit particularly close to home. It has affected her business, her customers, her neighborhood, and her family. 

“They [Haitians who no longer have TPS] have homes, they have cars, they have careers. Like, now does everybody just get up and go to Haiti and start over? Like, how does this work?” Jules said, adding that some have chosen to leave the country rather than risk detention.

The consequences can ripple through entire families, particularly in immigrant communities where relatives may pool resources, financially support one another or send money to family members in the Caribbean.

“Now all of the money that you’ve saved or your resources are drained through lawyers. You’re concerned about if your parent is eating, is your cousin eating? What if the person is pregnant and you know they’re not getting the best treatment? It’s not like you’re saying, ‘OK, let’s put you on a JetBlue flight and send you home.’ You’re going from facility to facility, far away to be processed and documented and all this stuff,” she said.

While immigration enforcement has not changed the services Fleur de Lis provides, Jules has found herself using the business as another place to share information with people worried about what could happen to them or their relatives.

“I always tell  people who are dealing with that situation, ‘Be very careful. Make sure you’re walking with your documents. If you have to report to somewhere, please let your family know. Get a power of attorney so if something does happen that you can have someone speak on your behalf,’” she said.

For the BID, documenting those experiences is a first step toward helping merchants. Mbonu said the organization hopes to use the survey findings to work with agencies and community partners on solutions for businesses confronting lower foot traffic, staffing concerns, higher costs and an increasingly anxious customer base.

“The small micro businesses are the crux of our community and nobody really actually appreciates the impact they have on the business community and on the community and the vibrancy of the neighborhood as a whole,” Mbonu said. “But once this has been challenged, the impact is quite seen here. And it’s just that we need to come up with flexible approaches to help solve many of these problems.”

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