Mamdani’s Commission on Government Efficiency proposes measures to trim bureaucratic hurdles.
The residents of New York won’t be casting ballots for citywide offices this year, yet five ballot measures could steer the city’s future more than any candidate on the ballot. Mayor Zohran Mamdani established a local counterpart to the federal Department of Government Efficiency, calling it the Commission on Government Efficiency (COGE). The aim is to modernize city operations and speed up public infrastructure and permitting. In that spirit, COGE has put five proposals before voters for the November ballot, largely targeting the bureaucratic hurdles surrounding new construction and business activity across all five boroughs.
The first three questions on the ballot would curb or eliminate the use of public hearings in various city review processes. Question 1 would, according to the ballot language, “streamline the process for using public spaces for purposes such as ramps, planters, and sidewalk cafes by removing mandatory hearings and the City Council’s disapproval of sidewalk cafes, while maintaining community and Council input.” Question 2 would “reduce paperwork for City contractors by authorizing the Procurement Policy Board to simplify the contractor questionnaire…and remove the mandatory hearing for the required client services report.” Question 3 would “simplify the review of street-safety projects to shorten construction timelines,” along with other changes. Question 4 concerns simplifying permitting.
These measures were not personally authored by Mamdani, but they embody a governing philosophy that New York City and other large cities increasingly need: a local government that won’t permit a small cadre of organized opponents to block progress for the city as a whole indefinitely.
Few issues illustrate the bottleneck to essential development more clearly than public review hearings. In theory, a public hearing embodies democracy at its purest: every voice is heard. In practice, however, it often becomes a slow, procedural obstruction. The most persistent and best-organized opponents gain a megaphone, while the millions of New Yorkers who would broadly benefit from more housing, improved infrastructure, and businesses that can open without being ensnared in red tape receive little input.
The 2026 ballot questions, if approved, would represent incremental steps toward tackling these problems. If all of them pass, the change would not be seismic—a planter here or a parcel of land there. Yet that incremental approach is deliberate: should routine administrative decisions trigger another round of formal public review hearings that could stall any change, large or small?
