After weeks of public hearings, Mayor Zohran Mamdani\u2019s Commission on Government Efficiency \u2014 also known as COGE \u2014 has come up with five potential ballot proposals.\u00a0<\/p>\n
What You Need To Know<\/p>\n
Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s charter commission\u00a0\u2014 the Commission on Government Efficiency or COGE\u00a0\u2014 has published five ballot questions for the November ballot\u00a0
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The questions range from speeding up the construction of bike and bus lanes to establishing a savings target for the city’s rainy day fund\u00a0
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The charter’s work comes as Mayor Eric Adams’ so-called “zombie commission” is in court over its push to get open primaries on the ballot\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cReally, the commission was listening. The commission was listening for ways to make government work better for New Yorkers,\u201d Ann Cheng, the executive director of COGE, said.<\/p>\n
The five questions range from cutting down the approval process for outdoor dining to speeding up city contracting to fast-tracking bus and bike lanes to establishing a process for putting money into the city\u2019s rainy day fund.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Cheng told NY1 that the questions focused on making government faster and easier to navigate.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe focus areas that we focused on were really places where we said, ‘We can take the charter. We can make changes to this old document that\u2019s still governing how we\u2019re doing business and really bring it into the 21st century,'” she said.<\/p>\n
Under question number three, the city’s Department of Transportation would be able to start work on street projects at the same time other agencies and the public are notified. A major change from the current system that requires previous consultation.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can\u2019t not do public engagement. That’s not something we or the Department of Transportation would ever want to do. But we are saying that where there is an immediate need, that public engagement can happen in parallel to the start of work,\u201d Cheng said.<\/p>\n
The proposal, if passed, could speed up the work on bus and bike lanes by 33%.<\/p>\n
Under question number five, the city would establish a process for keeping the city\u2019s reserves at\u00a0 12% of the tax revenue. The method for depositing the funds would need to be developed by May of next year.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cEfficiency is not about doing less, it’s not about cutting things, it’s not about slashing jobs. It’s about doing more, and if you\u2019re gonna do more, you have to plan for the future. We can\u2019t just be thinking about the next day and expect to really just deliver more for New Yorkers in a meaningful way,\u201d Cheng said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
“It’s not like you\u2019ll never see that money again, it’s like there\u2019s certain conditions under which you have to contribute and other conditions under which you may need to withdraw,” she continued.<\/p>\n
The city would be able to withdraw from the fund in the event the mayor certifies that there is an \u201cimmediate fiscal need that warrants a withdrawal above 50%,” Cheng said.<\/p>\n
In the background of COGE\u2019s work is former Mayor Eric Adams\u2019 so-called \u201czombie commission\u201d that is tied up in legal fights over its own push to get open primaries on the ballot. The next court hearing in that commission\u2019s fight is Wednesday.<\/p>\n
COGE will hold a final meeting on Thursday to finalize the questions that will appear on the November ballot.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After weeks of public hearings, Mayor Zohran Mamdani\u2019s Commission on Government Efficiency \u2014 also known as COGE \u2014…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":302411,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[109,25,6348,75,84,83,9,24,12,108,63,87,27,200],"class_list":["post-302410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-app-local-state-politics","tag-app-top-stories","tag-kelly-mena","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-news","tag-ny-state-of-politics-blog","tag-nyc","tag-politics","tag-top-stories","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302410","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=302410"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302410\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/302411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=302410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=302410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=302410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}