{"id":35573,"date":"2025-11-11T00:11:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-11T00:11:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/35573\/"},"modified":"2025-11-11T00:11:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-11T00:11:08","slug":"zohran-mamdanis-first-staff-picks-show-hes-going-full-speed-ahead-to-disaster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/35573\/","title":{"rendered":"Zohran Mamdani’s first staff picks show he’s going full speed ahead… to disaster"},"content":{"rendered":"

Don\u2019t expect 1st Deputy Mayor-designate Dean Fuleihan<\/a> to rein in an ounce of Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani worst urges: He\u00a0imposed no such restraint when he worked for Bill de Blasio.<\/p>\n

Plus, Zoh\u2019s pick for chief of staff, his longtime right hand Elle Bisgaard-Church<\/a>, will be a voice of the same unreason that\u2019s guided Mamdani\u2019s entire political career to date.<\/p>\n

The problem being that an assemblyman\u2019s failings easily pass without notice, whereas 8 million New Yorkers suffer when a mayor screws up.<\/p>\n

Those with a will to pull wool over their eyes will take solace in Fuleihan non-disastrous service as a top aide to then-Speaker Shelly Silver and other legislative poohbahs, yet his time as budget director and 1st deputy under Blas showed zero fiscal restraint.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not just that the city budget soared 18% (from $72 billion to $85 billion) on his four-year watch; it\u2019s that the mayor\u2019s most foolish pet projects all exploded in waste under Dean\u2019s supervision.<\/p>\n

De Blasio city-run ferries ran a double set of books, reporting $524 million in expenses when a comptroller\u2019s audit found $758 million; the per-ride subsidy was 50% larger than reported in Blas\u2019 final year.<\/p>\n

Fuleihan also failed to impose any fiscal discipline on First Lady Chirlane McCray\u2019s woeful ThriveNYC, which burned $850 million\u00a0on mental-health programs to no evident benefit to anyone except the folks they employed.<\/p>\n

He also oversaw de Blasio\u2019s bogus \u201cCitywide Savings Initiatives\u201d which set aside the long-established PEG rules for finding efficiencies for a host of bogus \u201csavings\u201d that centered on re-estimating costs rather than reforming operations \u2014 and Blas\u2019 ridiculously overoptimistic \u201creplace Rikers\u201d plan, which is now taking twice as long and costing more than twice as much to build (smaller) replacement jails.<\/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

In short, Mamdani tapped a \u201cwatchdog\u201d who was a lapdog for de Blasio and can be expected to be as bad or worse now.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s not so much a green-eyeshades wise man as a willfully-blinkered old fool.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the true toughness will come from Bisgaard-Church, the commissar enforcing the progressive party line on everyone at City Hall.<\/p>\n

Various would-be voices of reason are angling to get responsible types into Mamdani\u2019s brain trust, but the new mayor plainly means to have a staff who\u2019ll cheer his step.<\/p>\n

In other words: It\u2019s full speed ahead . . . until the fairy dust runs out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Don\u2019t expect 1st Deputy Mayor-designate Dean Fuleihan to rein in an ounce of Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani worst urges:…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":35574,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[302,20964,20784,304,11425,9,24,55,54,56,563,299,82],"class_list":["post-35573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-city-hall","tag-de-blasio-administration","tag-dean-fuleihan","tag-editorial","tag-elle-bisgaard-church","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-ny","tag-nyc-mayoral-election-2025","tag-opinion","tag-zohran-mamdani"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35573","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=35573"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35573\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}