As a candidate, and immediately after his 2025 electoral victory, Mayor Zohran Mamdani pledged to foster a “culture of transparency” at City Hall – a welcome message, given the corruption and double-dealing that sadly marked the previous administration.
Now in office, however, the mayor has a glaring double standard when it comes to releasing documents of potential public interest.
With great fanfare, the Mamdani administration released long-sought records related to the safety of Ground Zero in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. The timing of this announcement – just three days before the 25th anniversary of the attacks – seemed intended to change the subject from opposition to the mayor’s attendance at the 9/11 memorial.
Unfortunately, this welcome release of records is the exception, not the rule. NYC Common Sense has filed multiple Freedom of Information (FOIL) requests seeking documents from the Mamdani administration, dating back to the earliest days of his mayoralty. To date, his administration has complied with only one.
NYC Common Sense is not the lone victim of the mayor’s stonewalling. The Manhattan Institute is suing the Mamdani administration over his systematic effort to block access to what should be readily available information by assigning a six-month delay to every FOIL request.
True transparency cannot be achieved by cherry-picking what information the public should see and when it should see it. While FOIL laws give agencies leniency to act faithfully and consider volume and complexity, they were not intended to provide loopholes to stall or avoid meeting a statutory requirement. The law was named “Freedom of Information” for a reason.
Jim WaldenCourtesy of Jim Walden
The Manhattan Institute found that 220 of 248 FOIL requests to the Mayor’s Office (89%) made during his first seven months of 2026 were given the six-month treatment. The number of delayed requests grew over the summer, as 92% were laid aside from May to July.
This experience is not limited to watchdog organizations. The media is also running into a brick wall when seeking information from City Hall. In March, NBC New York expressed frustration with the administration’s delay in responding to a FOIL request for documents related to City Hall’s use of AI voice-cloning technology during the Adams administration.
Why City Hall wants to protect the former administration is baffling – especially after the mayor spent so much time criticizing his predecessor and undoing many of his initiatives.
It took Politico a tedious FOIL process to shed light on Mayor Mamdani’s schedule during his first months in office. Those documents, when finally provided, revealed large gaps in the mayor’s calendar that have yet to be explained.
Previous administrations have considered a more systematic approach to FOIL transparency. A 2017 city progress report attempted to make FOIL more transparent and accountable through the OpenRECORDS system. The de Blasio administration contemplated taking transparency one step further by putting FOIL statistics in the Mayor’s Management Report (MMR) but ultimately did not.
Mamdani has a real opportunity to make good on his transparency pledge by being the first mayor to make FOIL data a permanent part of the MMR. What is more transparent than being up front about response times, backlogs, denials, and appeals – all information that should be scrutinized as much as other performance indicators?
True transparency requires making important information available in a timely, understandable, and predictable way. This administration has a long way to go before fulfilling the mayor’s promise.
Jim Walden, an attorney and 2025 independent mayoral candidate, is chair of NYC Common Sense, a nonprofit government watchdog organization formed to hold City Hall accountable.