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“The city faces long overdue reforms, but change is difficult, messy and requires thoughtful, innovative and bold approaches.”
In his first 100 days as mayor, Zohran Mamdani announced that the city had filled 100,000 potholes—a sign of his commitment to delivering essential services to neighborhoods across the city. But for “pothole socialism” to succeed, it must go well beyond street repairs.
In fact, Mamdani has made promising early moves, having completed nine months in office. Building on his pothole strategy, the new mayor adopted rapid-response methods to improve services he had pledged to enhance, and has extended the model to other priorities: The Transportation Department accelerated bus-lane construction to improve speed and service reliability, while the Parks Department deployed dedicated teams to expedite emergency repairs at parks, playgrounds, and recreation centers.
Other examples that support his aggressive management to governing include:
The Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) is working to reduce the backlog of vacant apartments at NYCHA requiring extensive renovations, which have taken nearly a year to complete. Mamdani has committed millions in capital funding to accelerate renovations and move tenants into homes sooner.
The Department of Consumer and Worker Protection has recovered millions of dollars for defrauded consumers, while the Department of Small Business Services has begun removing barriers for entrepreneurs by eliminating nuisance fines and violations and expediting applications and certifications. The mayor is building aggressive guardrails that reject the business model of exploitation, checking predatory practices in the workplace.
Mamdani is likely to use this “blitz” model to tackle other persistent agency and governance problems, advancing “pothole socialism” as part of his broader reform agenda. In sports terms, he aims to “flood the zone” and clearly communicate the results of each initiative.
He will also likely build on this work through his Commission on Government Efficiency, a charter commission created to modernize city operations. Its core proposals address contracting, infrastructure, and fiscal management, and voters will decide on them in November.
But to really deliver, Mamdani will need to go deeper into the belly of a sclerotic bureaucracy mired in antiquated practices and work rules.
As a veteran city manager who led the Mayor’s Office of Operations and held senior roles in other of the city’s largest and most complex agencies, I’ve learned something about how these agencies work—and how they can be improved. My perspective is that of an “honest broker,” not an advocate or pundit.
When Mamdani ran for the mayoralty, one of the biggest knocks on him was a lack of experience running anything bigger than a State Senate office with a handful of staff—not remotely close to a city government with a budget of more than $125 billion, dozens of agencies and nearly 300,000 employees.
Overall, his first nine months have gone more smoothly from a management perspective than many detractors predicted. The most notable exception was the failure to give childcare agencies sufficient lead time to receive funding before the school year began—a lapse that also affected his newly launched 2-K program.
In his September 2026 Mayor’s Management Report—an early report card on his administration—Mamdani understandably emphasized successes while seldom acknowledging agency shortcomings. A candid assessment of government performance must clearly identify deficiencies, if the report is to be credible and used as a management tool.
Because Mamdani has made accountability and affordability central to his stewardship, future reports should highlight areas for improvement and pair key service metrics with corrective action plans. For example, the MMR notes NYCHA’s difficulty collecting rent from tenants. And it is taking NYCHA an average apartment renovation time of 300 days, despite additional resources intended to accelerate the work. The target for the next fiscal year also remains 300 days. In each case, the report offered neither an explanation of the problem nor proposed management changes.
The city faces long overdue reforms, but change is difficult, messy and requires thoughtful, innovative and bold approaches. In science, as with management, it may take many trials to get it right. His team has addressed some challenges, but significant problems remain.
On the mayor’s desk, a few examples of management issues he will need to address:
- Mamdani faces a projected $6 billion budget gap for next fiscal year. He must protect core services while advancing key priorities. He should pair agency efficiencies with structural reforms that modernize the city’s ossified bureaucracy, generate substantial savings and new revenue, and improve operations and service delivery through measurable workforce changes.
His toolkit should also include the following efficiency measures: consolidating budgeting, human resources, procurement and other administrative functions across smaller agencies under designated lead agencies to reduce duplicative costs. And use technology to streamline licensing, permitting, inspections, data management, and facilities operations, while improving agency outcomes and lowering governing operating costs. - The administration has yet to rein in excessive overtime spending. Doing so will require stronger operational controls, spending caps, and clear accountability at the police, fire, and correction departments. The NYPD alone spent $1 billion on overtime last year. The mayor should require monthly monitoring, publish each agency’s overtime costs, and report on progress—or explain what further management changes are needed. The administration also has not implemented its promised civilianization policy, which would shift uniformed personnel from administrative roles to field operations and assign essential office work to lower-cost civilian staff. The NYPD, long hostile to change, will require stiff negotiations to address these changes.
- Another major challenge remains unresolved: Mamdani inherited more than 13,000 municipal staffing vacancies, which continues to limit agencies’ ability to deliver core services nine months into his tenure. The mayor announced a new task force this week charged with modernizing the civil service system, and we’ll learn more about those plans in the coming months. But he has yet to explain how he will accelerate hiring, fill vacancies, reduce turnover, and improve retention—all essential to managing the city’s workforce. This issue may require an essential change in municipal labor negotiations taking place now.
The Human Resources Administration (HRA) illustrates the consequences of persistent staffing shortages. The agency continues to face chronic delays in processing SNAP and Cash Assistance applications, causing undue stress for clients who depend on these benefits. As of August, 1,860 positions remained vacant, representing a 14.87 percent agency vacancy rate, according to the Comptroller’s Vacancy Dashboard report. The administration has offered few details about how it will streamline applications and recertifications. This example further impacts the growing food demand in our city and its 900 soup kitchens and food pantries, and will require additional funding.
The current municipal labor negotiations could add another $1 billion, or more, to wage and benefit costs, assuming a 3.5 percent increase not reflected in current budget-gap projections. These talks will test whether Mamdani can secure meaningful savings by eliminating outdated work rules and labor practices, eliminating unlimited paid sick leave in the Department of Correction, and negotiating significant productivity improvements in exchange for fair wage increase.
The results of the municipal labor negotiations will be defining and consequential for Mandani’s administration. Since a substantial portion of the city’s budget is apportioned to wages and benefits, what agreements are reached will have a significant effect on budget choices and government operations in the coming years.
To this end:
- The mayor could seek to extend the standard 35-hour workweek to 37.5 hours in selected agencies. New York State defines full-time schedules as either 37.5 or 40 hours, depending on the civil service title and agency; many municipal employees in Los Angeles and Chicago work 40-hour weeks. Any change would require agreement in the current labor negotiations. Implemented through attrition, it could support a smaller, more productive, and better-paid workforce while generating substantial savings for key priorities.
- Vital City has published reports highlighting how New York City’s antiquated civil service system acts as an obstructive barrier to public service, including crippling hiring times for up to a year. To modernize archaic hiring timelines, Mamdani should seek, through labor negotiations, to move away from rigid, infrequent testing schedules toward continuous recruitment to ease chronic staffing shortages.
- He should seek to expand “broadbanding” civil service titles to provide more expanded job roles. Broadbanding is a management strategy that consolidates distinct civil service titles with multiple assignment levels, easing hiring and transfers within and across agencies. Under a broadbanded title, an agency can expeditiously reassign an employee to a new project or shift their daily responsibilities to meet the city’s changing operational needs.
- He should seek gainsharing, rewarding employees when performance improvements strengthen services, and pursue a four-day work week in selected agencies and selected work assignments, which would improve productivity and agency operations. It would also improve recruitment and hiring.
Some initially questioned whether Mamdani could manage the city’s sprawling workforce and serve as an effective executive. Dispelling those doubts through these municipal labor negotiations is essential to establishing his management credentials.
In the end, these labor negotiations are about finding a balance between fair wage hikes and givebacks that enable the city to better meet the needs of communities throughout the five boroughs. And of course, affordability.
Nine months into his mayoralty, how has Mamdani measured up to the standards he set for his own accountability?
As a manager, Mamdani has brought energy to governing. He’s sought residents’ feedback on whether his initiatives are improving their lives, and listens to what people want through open engagement. These qualities reflect a genuine commitment to using government action at a pivotal moment to help working-class and low-income residents feel secure, thrive, and share fully in all the city offers.
His first nine months have offered glimpses of an insurgent democratic socialist approach to leadership and an ambitious governing agenda. It is a promising start, but much more must be done to sustain a new era of “pothole socialism.”
The coming months will further test his leadership—and reveal what he is willing to fight for.
For over 40 years, Harvey Robins has worked in various positions in government, non-profits and foundations, including the NYC Human Resources Administration as the first deputy administrator; Board of Education, as deputy chancellor for finance administration; the director of operations of the Mayor’s Office of Operations; The Children’s Aid Society, as director of strategic planning and the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation as director of strategic planning and operations. Recently he has written opinion articles for City and State and City Limits.