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Within eight days, he and Governor Kathy Hochul announced $1.2 billion for universal childcare, funded entirely from existing state revenue.¹ The investment includes a 1,000-seat expansion of the 3-K program and 2,000 full-day, full-year seats for two-year-olds, the first time New York City has offered care at that age. Families in lower-income neighborhoods will receive spots first. The seats run from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., 260 days a year, making the program functionally full-time childcare rather than a school-day schedule.² By fall 2026, a parent in the Bronx who currently spends $26,000 a year on daycare will spend zero.³ Hochul deserves equal credit here. The money came through a city-state partnership, both levels of government investing at the same time.⁴ At his hundred-day rally, Mamdani announced five city-run grocery stores, one per borough, starting at La Marqueta in East Harlem.⁵ La Marqueta sits on city-owned land under the Metro-North viaduct, the same spot where Fiorello LaGuardia opened a public market in 1936 so working families could buy cheaper produce.⁶ The stores will contract with third-party operators, pay union wages, and sell staple goods at subsidized prices. In the half-mile radius around La Marqueta, nearly 40 percent of households receive public assistance or SNAP benefits.⁷ Grocery prices across the city have risen 66 percent since COVID.⁸ The first store could open by the end of 2027, with all five operating before the end of Mamdani’s term. Government-run retail is one of the oldest and most ordinary functions of public administration in this country. Seventeen states operate government-owned liquor stores, many of them profitably, generating revenue that funds schools, roads, and public health programs. North Dakota has run a state-owned bank since 1919, turned a profit every year for over a century, and returned $335 million to the state in 2024 alone.⁹ Hundreds of American municipalities own their electric utilities and broadband networks. When these operations generate revenue, that money funds other public services. When they don’t, they still deliver something essential to the community, the same way schools, buses, fire departments, and police do. Safe food at affordable prices, like freedom of movement and public safety, is exactly the kind of thing government exists to provide. His administration recovered $9 million in restitution for workers and small businesses cheated by employers, including a $5 million settlement for cheated delivery workers.¹⁰ He expanded protected time off for 4.3 million workers and delivered $34 million in repairs, settlements, and judgments for tenants fighting negligent landlords.¹¹ His Department of Consumer and Worker Protection proposed the first municipal click-to-cancel rule in the country, allowing the city to fine businesses that trap consumers in hard-to-cancel subscriptions and recurring charges.¹² Each of these creates an enforcement mechanism at the city level that functions regardless of what the federal Department of Labor or HUD does or fails to do. On housing, Mamdani revived the Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants, which the Adams administration had defunded and sidelined, and appointed longtime tenant organizer Cea Weaver to run it.¹³ On his first day in office, his administration intervened in a private landlord bankruptcy case covering 93 buildings to protect the tenants inside them.¹⁴ He launched the LIFT task force to inventory city-owned land suitable for housing development, with a report due by July, and the SPEED task force to cut permitting barriers that slow construction.¹⁵ He ordered “Rental Ripoff” public hearings across the city to collect testimony from tenants about illegal fees, retaliation, neglected repairs, and economic discrimination, with agencies required to produce a public report and action plan.¹⁶ He appointed six of the nine members of the Rent Guidelines Board, which sets allowable rent increases for roughly two million New Yorkers in rent-stabilized apartments, and has signaled his intent to pursue a rent freeze when the board votes in June.¹⁷ Mamdani inherited a $12 billion budget deficit from the Adams administration, which the City Comptroller described as the largest gap since the Great Recession.¹⁸ The previous administration had systematically underbudgeted essential services. Adams budgeted $860 million for cash assistance in fiscal year 2026 when projections put the actual cost at nearly $1.7 billion.¹⁹ Mamdani’s response combined transparency with aggressive cost reduction. His administration appointed Chief Savings Officers at every city agency, required each to identify savings of 1.5 percent for fiscal year 2026 and 2.5 percent for fiscal year 2027, and agencies identified more than $1.7 billion in savings.²⁰ The switch to the NYCE PPO healthcare plan for city employees saves $411 million this year and $791 million next year.²¹ He secured $1.5 billion from the state through the Hochul partnership to cover expenses Albany had shifted onto the city.²² His administration terminated the McKinsey contract that had cost $9 million, began insourcing IT and consultant contracts across agencies, and audited dependent eligibility on employee health plans to remove ineligible dependents, projected to save an additional $100 million.²³ Combined, these actions cut the deficit nearly in half. The Comptroller called the resulting budget significantly more transparent and accurate than anything the previous administration produced.²⁴ The first-quarter crime numbers are where a skeptical reader should pay close attention. The city recorded 54 murders, the lowest first-quarter total since CompStat tracking began in 1994, down 28 percent from the prior year.²⁵ Brooklyn murders fell 57 percent. Manhattan fell 44 percent. Staten Island recorded zero murders across 178 consecutive days, the second-longest streak in recorded history.²⁶ Shooting incidents matched the prior year’s record low. Major crime dropped more than 5 percent across every borough. Burglaries fell 21 percent. Robberies fell nearly 8 percent.²⁷ Crime in public housing fell 7.2 percent, with record lows for murders, shootings, and robberies within NYCHA developments.²⁸ The NYPD seized more than 1,000 guns in the first quarter alone.²⁹ These numbers reflect trends built across multiple administrations and no honest person credits them to any single mayor. They do, however, demolish the argument that investing in people instead of policing makes a city dangerous. A democratic socialist funded universal childcare, opened grocery stores, expanded tenant protections, and limited ICE enforcement, and the city got safer. On immigration, Mamdani barred ICE from entering city property, including schools, shelters, hospitals, and parking garages, without a judicial warrant.³⁰ He reversed the Adams-era order that had allowed federal immigration authorities into the Rikers Island jail complex.³¹ His administration launched a Know Your Rights campaign in 10 languages and distributed 30,000 flyers through houses of worship.³² When a Columbia University student was detained by ICE, Mamdani made a direct appeal to Trump and secured the student’s release.³³ On corrections, Mamdani committed to closing Rikers Island and ordered full compliance with the city’s ban on solitary confinement.³⁴ He appointed Stanley Richards as Department of Correction commissioner, the first formerly incarcerated person to lead the department in its history.³⁵ His administration opened a long-delayed therapeutic center at Bellevue Hospital to treat incarcerated people.³⁶ Mamdani filled 100,000 potholes at the fastest repair pace in eleven years.³⁷ He restored four bike and bus infrastructure projects the previous administration shelved and announced fast bus lane expansion across 45 priority corridors.³⁸ He committed to containerizing all residential trash citywide with a funded timeline, after the previous administration’s effort stalled without a deadline or a budget.³⁹ He launched an initiative to install public restrooms across all five boroughs.⁴⁰ His administration established the Office of LGBTQIA+ Affairs.⁴¹ He invested $20 million in early childhood mental health and moved homelessness outreach away from the NYPD.⁴² Whether the first hundred days become a foundation or a high-water mark depends partly on Albany. The budget gap Mamdani inherited from previous city and state administrations constrains new investment, and his largest revenue proposal, the wealth tax, requires the governor and state legislature to act. But the trajectory is already set. By fall, 2,000 two-year-olds will have full-day, full-year childcare seats that did not exist in January. By 2027, a city-run grocery store will open in East Harlem selling subsidized food on the same spot where LaGuardia built one ninety years ago. Those cost money the way fire departments and public schools cost money: because delivering the service is the point. Your city and state can do everything mentioned here and even more. You can go find your city councilmember and state house representative. Tell them what you want, in person, persistently, and specifically. A quick note: we need 10 subscribers every article to keep all this going. We reached that number yesterday, 18/30 days now. If you can be a member then you are personally keeping the activism machine running for MILLIONS of monthly readers! |
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