Zohran Mamdani’s Real-World Constraints

The mayor of the City of New York is the most powerful municipal official in the United States, and it isn’t even close. But to say this isn’t to say that the next mayor, likely Zohran Mamdani, will have the ability to unilaterally do some of the things he’s been promising on the campaign. There are very real structural, budgetary and legal limits on what the city’s chief executive can accomplish without the cooperation and support of other branches of city or state government.

New York’s mayor is usually called a “strong mayor,” and it’s clear why. The mayor commands a workforce of approximately 300,000 — about the same number of people who live in Pittsburgh or Cincinnati.

With a few exceptions — mainly his commissioner of investigations and the corporation counsel, who lead the city Law Department — he can appoint hundreds of commissioners, department heads, their deputies and other senior managers without the advice and consent of the City Council. 

One of the entities and employees under the mayor’s control is the Department of Education, which operates the city’s public high schools, middle schools and elementary schools — a function often overseen by semi-independent Boards of Education in other cities. (It is worth noting that Mamdani has said he wants to weaken this mayoral control in favor of a system that allows more community input, which might require City Council and/or state legislation.)

Unlike most other mayors across America, he is not constrained by a county executive or county legislature. Indeed, he has five counties under his direct control with the ability to deploy city resources among them pretty much as he sees fit.

And the resources he has to allocate are enormous — an annual operating budget of more than $115 billion (about the same as the entire state of Florida) and a 10-year capital budget of about $175 billion.  

But while these powers and his resources are vast, the mayor is far from omnipotent. So it is worth asking, especially with respect to Mamdani’s ambitious proposals, what is it that he would be able to do on his own and what would require the cooperation and approval of others?

Let’s take a look at some of his most significant proposals:

Fast and free buses. The mayor controls the streets; he does not control the bus network, which is run by the MTA, and which is mainly accountable to the governor. It is certainly within his power, through his appointed commissioner of transportation, to delineate bus lanes and, through a variety of physical designs — including physical barriers — assure that those lanes would be used exclusively for buses. While there would be consultations with local communities, ultimately most of the mayor’s commitment to faster buses can be realized without the approval of others. Presumably, faster buses are also a goal of the MTA’s, so there should be close cooperation between the mayor and the MTA on realizing much faster bus service.

As to making buses free — which in Mamdani’s vision would make them somewhat faster as well because loading wouldn’t be slowed down by the process of passengers boarding through one door and paying fares — it is less likely that the mayor, on his own, will be able to get this done. It would cost more than $500 million annually to the MTA in lost fares to make all buses free to riders. To replace this lost revenue, the city would have to provide those funds annually to the MTA either through a reallocation of existing approved funding under the mayor’s control or, more likely, a budget modification approved by the City Council. Alternatively, the state Legislature, with the governor’s support, would have to allocate additional annual operating funding to the MTA. In either case, the MTA might have to be required through state law, or otherwise directed to make buses free, given the Authority’s institutional resistance to free buses. That probably would require support from the governor and, possibly, majority support from the state Assembly and Senate — none of which is a sure thing. 

City-run grocery stores. It is not yet clear exactly what form Mamdani’s promise to open a small network of publicly run grocery stores would take.  What is clear, however, is that the mayor will have the unfettered ability to do this through the city’s Economic Development Corporation, which is under his control. EDC already operates and controls several retail food operations, and the city has been in this business — in one way or another — for more than 80 years. The cost of establishing these new stores, assuming just one in each borough as Mamdani has suggested, is fairly minor in the context of the city’s overall budget and EDC has the resources to undertake it. 

Rent freezes. The mayor derives his power to freeze the rent on rent-stabilized apartments from his authority to appoint members of the Rent Guidelines Board. The RGB cannot act arbitrarily or capriciously; it is supposed to be guided by a series of real economic indicators. Deviating from that would make it vulnerable to lawsuits. But it is most likely that the mayor’s appointees would follow his policy guidance.  Mayor de Blasio has already established the precedent that a mayor-appointed RGB can freeze rents — his appointees did so. But it’s also important to note that Mamdani’s authority would only apply to rent-stabilized units, which number about 1 million. The mayor does not have the power to freeze (or affect) rents on market-rate units or maintenance fees on unregulated condominiums and coops. Rents on thousands of more recently designated “affordable” housing units, which are governed by a myriad of federal, state and local laws and regulations, could not be subject to the mayor’s unilateral action.

Department of Community Safety. Mamdani has proposed to take a chunk of activities out of the New York City Police Department and put them into a new Department of Community Safety.  The premise is that such a department would be able to more efficiently and humanely address people struggling with serious mental illness and quality of life problems, while allowing the uniformed police force to focus more efficiently on serious crime. Creating such a department would require the approval of the City Council and a reallocation of funds, currently budgeted to the NYPD, to the new department. Of course, even if the Council resists, the mayor does have the power to simply reorganize the Police Department and create an “Office of Community Safety” within it. This might not accomplish all the goals of a new department — especially the cultural change to certain types of enforcement action — but it might be a unilateral first step.

Housing production. Mamdani has proposed having government directly finance and build 200,000 units of affordable housing over the coming decade. That would cost $100 billion, which would hinge on the City getting permission to borrow $70 billion — or about 40% more per year added to its annual capital budget — which would exceed the city’s debt limit. Without a very substantial increase in taxes or an infusion of funds from the State, the City would be unable to sustain the added debt service required, absent legislation.

Universal child care. Mamdani envisions providing universal free childcare to New York families, from six weeks to five years of age. Operationally, the mayor could probably do this on his own if he had the resources. However, the cost of child care is considerable; estimates put the price tag around $5 billion annually. Depending on the scale, it would require either a substantial re-allocation of existing city resources — or additional funding to the city from either direct funding from the state or an increase in taxes. This brings us to taxes.

Taxes. To pay for many of his priorities, Mamdani has proposed raising income taxes on New Yorkers who earn more than $1 million a year by two percentage points to help fund some of his ambitious proposals. He also proposes raising the state’s highest corporate tax rate from 7.25% to 11.5%. The mayor does not have the power to increase taxes unilaterally.  Indeed, the City itself does not have the power to impose new taxes or increase existing ones without the approval of the state Legislature and the governor, with the notable exception of the local property tax, which requires only the approval of the mayor and City Council. 

Of course, much of Zohran Mamdani’s vision could be realized through additional funds flowing from the federal government, but — let’s face it — regardless of who our next mayor is, that’s not in the cards.