New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said he\u2019s forming a new Commission of Government Efficiency, or COGE, to improve the way City Hall spends public funds. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis commission will find ways for our city to work smarter, faster and more efficiently for working people,\u201d Mamdani wrote in a post on X on Thursday. \u201cNew Yorkers deserve a city government as careful with their money as they are.\u201d<\/p>\n
The branding invites inevitable comparisons with Elon Musk\u2019s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, the controversial and now defunct Trump administration project that was designed to slash spending and shrink the bureaucracy. Musk claimed he would cut $2 trillion in spending, but left after clashing with cabinet secretaries and seeing some of his efforts blocked by courts. <\/p>\n
Read more: Remembering the Rise and Fall of Musk\u2019s DOGE<\/p>\n
Mamdani said his effort will be led by Patrick Gaspard, a former US ambassador to South Africa, while the mayor proposed selecting Ann Cheng as executive director. Mamdani said in a statement that COGE is expected to \u201cremove outdated bureaucratic barriers that slow infrastructure projects and delay services.\u201d<\/p>\n
The body plans to hold 10 public hearings across the city and then proposals will be presented to voters in November.<\/p>\n
Mamdani, a democratic socialist, has primarily sought to raise taxes to cover a gaping budget deficit and fund a progressive agenda, including free buses, free childcare and an ambitious program to construct affordable housing. But he\u2019s said in the past that he would look to cut some funding to bloated city agencies, including the Department of Education, and campaigned on reforming the procurement process to save the city money. <\/p>\n
The mayor unveiled a $124.7 billion budget this month that included $4 billion in aid from New York state. On Wednesday, Albany approved a new pied-a-terre tax that is designed to raise $500 million to help the city.<\/p>\n
Read more: Mamdani Scraps Property Tax Hike, Counts Second-Home Revenue<\/p>\n
(Updates with COGE details in fourth paragraph.)<\/p>\n
\u00a9 2026 Bloomberg L.P. All rights reserved. Used with permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said he\u2019s forming a new Commission of Government Efficiency, or COGE, to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":246741,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[34757,28784,5031,9,56,63,65,64,8968,4281],"class_list":["post-246740","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-federal-budget","tag-low-income-housing","tag-mass-transit","tag-new-york","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news","tag-real-property-tax","tag-state-budget"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246740","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=246740"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246740\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/246741"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=246740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=246740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=246740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}