Mamdani’s “Faster Government” Ballot Measures Swept The Midterms in NYC

By Michael Gonik

Like much of the country, New York hit the booths on Election Day with a mandate. The major difference here is that our “blue wave” arrived last summer, during a historic primary season (or, arguably, all the way back in 2025 with the election of Mayor Mamdani), when young, affordability-focused progressives and leftists took down the old guard of establishment Democrats in a bid for a version of the city’s future that everyday New Yorkers might reasonably attain in their lifetimes. Which is to say our midterm mission wasn’t to catch the wave but to figure out the most efficient, inclusive, and cost-effective means of focusing and supporting the one that already landed. That’s why your ballots may have seemed a little thin on actual candidates yesterday; for New York, this wasn’t an election of who, so much as how, which is where those pesky ballot proposals come in.

There were five total included on this year’s ticket, fittingly dubbed the “faster government” measures, each designed by the mayor’s newly formed “Committee of Government Efficiency” (or, hilariously, COGE) to improve the pace at which the city governs and manages its resources by amending the City Charter. And all five passed, according to The New York Times.

They can be responsibly divvied up into efforts to optimize or entirely eliminate the various sources of bureaucracy and redundancy that interfere with the city’s ability to respond to the needs of residents and businesses in a timely manner. The first does this for public space use, eliminating a mandatory hearing for anything from outdoor dining areas to sidewalk benches. The second aims at city contractors, which absorb around 40%—or roughly $42 billion—of NYC’s annual budget. Prop 2 sets out to make it easier and faster for the city to pay these entities, requiring regular meetings of the Procurement Policy Board—tasked with oversight of these payments by the City Charter—and cans an odd questionnaire that was previously a mandatory filing for big and small businesses.

The third is a fast track for street safety infrastructure, tweaking the City Charter to simplify the process for reviewing projects like bike and bus lanes, as well as the sale or lease of city-owned properties of 10,000 square feet or less. The fourth is a big one for unclogging building permitting process, creating a single permitting approval authority in the Department of Buildings, instead of ping-ponging between the 18 different agencies currently overseeing the process for anything from a home renovation to an entire housing development. And finally, the last of the measures makes sure we’re building a bag for any and all potential bubble-popping scenarios by setting a minimum 12% allocation of the city’s tax revenues towards its “rainy day fund,” which voters approved the creation of with a ballot proposal in 2019. But that measure failed to establish any base amount of contribution, or any obligation for the city to actually put aside the money, for that matter.

Perhaps this is a long way of saying that less than a year in, it seems the mayor—probably, no, definitely, the most instantly active and productive one of at least this writer’s lifetime—is only just getting started. God knows how functional this city might be by the end of his term.