Cherished New York City voters, this midterm election, you are not only being asked to consider candidates. You are also being asked to consider ideas.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Are they the most exciting ideas you will ever hear? Absolutely not. But could they cause meaningful change to how the City operates? Yes indeed. You’ll be voting on a series of tweaks to City law that will make it easier to reconfigure our roads for safety, efficiency, and leisure.<\/p>\n
You’ll also be deciding how the City puts money aside for a crisis scenario such as, I don’t know, an AI bubble collapse<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Where did these proposals come from? In May, Mayor Zohran Mamdani convened a charter review commission<\/a> led by Patrick Gaspard, the former diplomat, de Blasio advisor, and Democrat-whisperer<\/a>. The commission heard testimony from more than 1,000 New Yorkers, including elected officials and advocates, and released their proposals in July<\/a>.<\/p>\n Mayors frequently do this. Last year, New Yorkers voted yes on a series of complicated and extremely consequential housing ballot proposals<\/a> (among others<\/a>) from Mayor Eric Adams’s charter commission that reshifted power to approve projects from the City Council to the mayor and the five borough presidents.\u00a0<\/p>\n If 2025’s major ballot prop theme was Yay Increase Multifamily Buildings Yugely (YIMBY), 2026’s might be Fix All Streets and other Stuff Today (FASST).<\/p>\n This top-line message isn’t subtle: Gaspard’s charter review commission called themselves “the Commission on Government Efficiency (COGE)” as a somewhat puzzling reference to the reviled DOGE<\/a>. And recently, Mayor Mamdani’s office has released slick promos<\/a> that very strongly suggest that these ballot propositions are good for the city.\u00a0<\/p>\n Give us your email to read the full story<\/p>\n \n Sign up now for our free newsletters.\n <\/p>\n