New Yorkers, you\u2019ve been slacking \u2014 so the mayor wants to organize you.<\/p>\n
Mayor Zohran Mamdani isn\u2019t happy that only 400 people showed up to last year\u2019s Rent Guidelines Board hearings.<\/p>\n
In response, last Wednesday, he launched Organize NYC<\/a>, a supposed volunteer effort to have New Yorkers participate in local government.<\/p>\n Taken straight from the Democratic Socialists of America\u2019s community-organizing playbook, Mamdani is calling it \u201ca long-term initiative to bring mass public participation into the work of governing.\u201d<\/p>\n First stop: the RGB. The body with power to set rent adjustments for the city\u2019s 1 million rent-stabilized units will hold four public hearings in June before voting on increases at its June 25 meeting.<\/p>\n Mamdani was elected on the dishonest promise to \u201cimmediately\u201d freeze the rent on stabilized tenants for four years.<\/p>\n Since taking office, however, he has been forced to recognize what the law has made clear from the start: He cannot set rents himself, and overt interference with the independent RGB could expose a rent freeze to a legal challenge<\/a>.<\/p>\n So Mamdani has found another way.<\/p>\n His Office of Mass Engagement will soon recruit so-called volunteers to fan out across selected neighborhoods and encourage rent-stabilized tenants to attend the hearings.<\/p>\n In other words, City Hall is mobilizing the constituency most likely to support the mayor\u2019s preferred outcome while insisting it is merely promoting civic participation.<\/p>\n He\u2019s paying lip service to the RGB\u2019s independence while directing a government office to organize a campaign ensuring the board \u201canswers to the people it serves\u201d \u2014 an ominous phrase that gives away Organize NYC\u2019s actual purpose.<\/p>\n The mayor insists the effort aims to educate, not advocate. According to Mass Engagement Commissioner and DSA veteran Tascha Van Auken, the volunteers are \u201cnot advocating for any specific outcome or position.\u201d<\/p>\n Don\u2019t be fooled. Organize NYC is a thinly veiled, taxpayer-funded effort to embed campaign-style political organizing inside city government, dress it up as civic virtue and deliver Mamdani\u2019s campaign promise under a veneer of official neutrality.<\/p>\n It raises serious policy, legal and ethical questions. Mamdani has not explained how he will fund Organize NYC or how much it will cost.<\/p>\n He claims the city faces a budget crisis of historic proportions, yet he has already allocated\u00a0$2 million<\/a> to pay the salaries of the organizers in the Mass Engagement office. Now he\u2019s found the money to organize thousands of supposed volunteers.<\/p>\n Rule \u00a71-13 of the Conflicts of Interest Board prohibits public servants from using city \u201cletterhead, title, personnel, equipment, resources, supplies, or technology assets\u201d for any \u201cnon-City purpose.\u201d<\/p>\n It isn\u2019t apparent that using public resources to advance Mamdani\u2019s campaign promise qualifies as a \u201ccity purpose.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\tGet opinions and commentary from our columnists\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe to our daily Post Opinion newsletter!\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\tThanks for signing up!\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n The mayor will claim that it\u2019s perfectly appropriate to use a branch of his office to promote New Yorkers\u2019 participation in public affairs.<\/p>\n If Organize NYC were truly a neutral civic-participation effort, City Hall would have a general plan to increase attendance at City Council meetings, rezoning and procurement hearings, and the countless boards and authorities that hold public sessions across New York.<\/p>\n But the Mass Engagement Office has no companion plan to increase attendance at any of those.<\/p>\n Nor is it likely the campaign will try terribly hard to encourage landlords and their supporters to show up at the RGB meetings.\u00a0<\/p>\n Its promotional drive is directed solely at the body that controls the fate of the mayor\u2019s most cherished campaign promise.<\/p>\n If successful in obtaining a rent freeze, Organize NYC would violate the fundamental legal principle<\/a> that government may not do indirectly what it is forbidden to do directly.<\/p>\n A group ostensibly created to promote democratic participation would, ironically, erode the rule of law.<\/p>\n Once City Hall has built a taxpayer-funded organizing arm for one campaign promise, Mamdani can redeploy it for the next.<\/p>\n