Demolition might conjure images of bulldozers, sledgehammers and wrecking balls slamming into structures that crumble dramatically. 

But in New York’s Good Cause Eviction Law, the definition of “demolish” is not straightforward. What does it mean to demolish a home? And can a landlord demolish just an apartment, or an entire building?

Those are questions looming over tenants whose landlords opted not to renew their leases by citing an intent to demolish. It’s one of the few reasons a landlord can evict rent-paying tenants in unregulated apartments under the 2024 law, which caps rent increases and requires landlords to offer most tenants renewal leases.

“We don’t know what demolition of an apartment means,” said Ellen Davidson, an attorney with the Legal Aid Society who worked on the law. “It’s a live question.”

For several tenants in New York City, the right to remain in their homes hinges on the answers — like for roommates Feryal Nawaz, Carla Orlandi and Parisa, whose landlord refused to renew the lease for their East Village apartment, citing a plan to demolish it.

The roommates, all 27 years old, were excited to stay in their three-bedroom, 1.5-bathroom apartment. They’d become close, hosting movie nights and decorating for each other’s birthdays. Their home became a central gathering place for friends; they kept deflated air mattresses in a corner of the living room for guests staying over.

Over many previous months, the roommates had rebuffed their landlord’s offers of several thousand dollars to leave early. But then the landlord officially said they had to leave when their lease is up at the end of June. Facing the uncertainty of the Good Cause Eviction Law, the roommates have been reaching out to tenant hotlines, lawyers and their local representatives to seek insight before they make plans to either move out, or head to court.

“There’s so many loopholes in these laws,” said Parisa, who declined to share her last name. “If it’s really meant to protect us, you shouldn’t have to be a lawyer. You shouldn’t have to go to court and fight and hope and pray.”

The roommates said they’d make a decision about next steps by the beginning of June.

“As May still plays out, I’m not jumping to any conclusions,” Nawaz said. “I want to make sure that we put up a fight regardless, even if we do end up leaving.”

David Hazout, an agent of the LLC that owns the roommates’ apartment building, declined to comment. A lawyer representing the LLC had sent the roommates renovation plans that show the kitchen and one of the bathrooms would be relocated within the unit. Permits filed with the Department of Buildings in March show plans to renovate 10 apartments in the building, records show.

But does a renovation count as a demolition? And what is the definition of a “housing accommodation”? That’s the opaque term the Good Cause law uses to refer to where tenants live. 

Shafeeqa Kolia, a spokesperson for Sen. Julia Salazar, sponsor of the Good Cause law, said the provision was intended to refer to the demolition of a whole building. Kolia said the Senator’s team would look into drafting legislation to clarify the definition of “demolish” in the law.

Absent a legislative update, those key questions must be answered in court.

Defining Demolition

Already, there are at least two cases in Housing Court that are grappling with what “demolition” really means.

One case concerns some tenants of two apartments in an East Village building, just three blocks north of Fawaz, Orlandi and Parisa. In March 2024, those other tenants got notice from their landlord that their leases would not be renewed. In that notice, the landlord indicated the “housing accommodation” would be demolished; in later court documents, the owner said they would renovate the apartments. 

The tenants’ lawyer, who declined to comment for this story, cited the Oxford Dictionary’s definition of demolish in court documents: “pull or knock down (a building)”… “to tear down,” “to destroy,” “to flatten,” “to raze” and “wipe off the face of the earth.”

The lawyer argued a single apartment cannot be demolished, and that a demolition is not the same thing as a renovation.

Tracy Ferdinand, the judge presiding over the case said that an individual apartment — not an entire building — could be considered a “housing accommodation,” but left open whether a renovation counts as a demolition.

The landlord submitted architecture reports and cost estimates for the renovations. But the judge, too, resorted to a dictionary definition of demolish — this time, from Merriam-Webster — to cast doubt on whether those documents established plans to demolish the apartments, and ultimately said they failed to do so.

The case will go to trial. But whatever the court decides, it likely won’t affect other tenants fighting similar evictions. Legal precedent can only be set through appeals courts.

That means another case in Housing Court may end up with a totally different outcome compared to what happens in the East Village tenants’ case. The second case concerns the tenants of five apartments in an Upper West Side building, whose landlord would not renew leases because of demolition plans. (The tenants declined to comment for this story.)

The building is a Renaissance Revival-style townhouse in a historic district, and the lawyer representing the tenants, James Fishman, pointed out demolition would require the approval of the city Landmarks Preservation Commission. He, too, argued that demolition was not the same as renovation, and that a single apartment in a building could not be demolished.

“I think the whole point of the statute is to protect tenants in their apartments, and this is kind of a loophole,” Fishman said.

Neither the landlord nor the attorney representing the landlord in the Upper West Side case responded to requests for comment.

Worth the Fight?

While “demolish” stays undefined as it relates to the Good Cause law, risks remain for tenants who want to try to stay in their apartments while a landlord is claiming demolition.

“You have to decide whether it’s worth fighting when we don’t know for certain how the statute is going to be interpreted,” said Davidson, the Legal Aid lawyer. She said she’d ask the landlord for records of permits and architectural plans for any proposed demolition.

Sherwin Belkin, an attorney who represents landlords, said he would tell any clients who would want to evict tenants under Good Cause that they’d need to pursue at least a gut renovation.

“You’re leaving the four walls of the apartment and maybe some of the partitions, but I wouldn’t leave in much more. The more you leave, the more there’s issues about whether or not you’re demolishing,” Belkin said. “Your best case is to create a blank box.”

Housing lawyers do not expect courts to come to a final determination on what “demolish” means for at least a year as cases and appeals proceed.

In the meantime, tenants like Nawaz, Orlandi and Parisa are left to navigate uncharted waters.

“It does suck being the guinea pig, but I’m not entirely mad about it,” Nawaz said. “I do think this is probably happening to a lot of people out there … It’s not just about us.”

The roommates suspect the landlord will renovate the apartment — as has been done with other units in the building — and increase the rent. They’re already paying about $6,200 for their apartment. 

They’re also worried about the prospect of finding a new place. Nawaz and Orlandi have been in the apartment for almost three years, the longest they’ve lived in a place since college, they said. Parisa moved in last year after coming from Atlanta and not knowing anyone in New York, but made fast friends with the two others.

Above all, the three roommates are frustrated about the ambiguity in the Good Cause Eviction Law.

“This was supposed to be put in place to help out the tenants,” Orlandi said. “But they made the lines so blurred and all the words so vague that no one knows — not even lawyers, not even ChatGPT — no one knows what that even means.”

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Mayor Zohran Mamdani dropped his threat to hike property taxes as a way to close the budget gap after Gov. Kathy Hochul promised additional aid for his $124.5 billion spending plan.

The city budget includes an additional $4 billion in support to close the gap, totaling nearly $8 billion over two years.

That money is through $352 million in direct aid, $3.2 billion from programs that require state authorization and $500 million in new revenue — enough to close the $12 billion budget gap for the next two fiscal years that Mamdani inherited from his predecessor.

“I am proud to announce that we have closed the gap entirely, down to zero,” the mayor said at a press conference Tuesday.

“It hasn’t been easy but we have balanced the budget and we have done so without placing the burden on the backs of working New Yorkers.”

The mayor thanked Hochul, State Senate Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, State Assembly Majority Carl Heastie and Council Speaker Julie Menin for their help and partnership, along with “the movement that carried us to City Hall.”

The budget, he said, “is evidence of a new era of government in our city, one that can balance both ambition and fiscal responsibility.”

The mayor’s budget manages to close a $5.6 billion shortfall for this fiscal year and an estimated $7 billion gap for next year without new income taxes for the wealthy and for corporations that he had demanded from Albany, and without raiding the city’s financial reserves. 

Jabs at the Wealthy

But Mamdani said they are taxing the rich through other changes, like a pied-à-terre tax on luxury second homes that is estimated to bring in $500 million in new revenue. 

There is also a proposal to reduce the Unincorporated Business Tax credit, known as UBT, which he noted mostly benefits millionaires. Reducing the tax credit will bring in an estimated $68 million, according to the mayor. 

“These are common sense measures,” he said. “Working New Yorkers cannot be asked to sacrifice as we sit in the wealthiest city in the wealthiest country in the history of the world.”

Pension Moves

Other revenue and savings comes from the state taking over expenses that shifted to the city years ago, like line of duty death benefits for families of first responders killed on the job, saving the city $202 million. There’s also an additional $600 million in youth programming and $300 million to restore money for sales tax intercepts.

The city will also seek state approval for pension amortization, which could save more than $2 billion by restructuring some payments over the next two years, which Mamdani assured wouldn’t affect benefits for current or retired city workers.

“I think there’s a logic to smoothing out payments,” city Comptroller Mark Levine said Tuesday morning after a budget briefing with the mayor and his team. 

“I think it’s easier to plan for the long term when you have a smooth payment schedule.”

More than $1 billion in savings comes through a delay in the state’s mandated cap on class sizes which would require hiring more teachers and administrators. Last year, the city approved hiring 3,700 more teachers and 100 more assistant principals.

Mamdani added more money to hire 1,000 additional teachers and $1.5 billion to the $7.6 billion existing budget for the School Construction Authority’s five-year capital plan.

The mayor is also working to rein in spending on some students whose private school tuition is paid for by the city when it’s found they can’t receive the same special education services at public schools. 

The cost of what’s known as “Carter” and “Connors” cases – depending on how the money is paid out – has increased 300% over the last decade, according to data obtained by Chalkbeat. Tuition costs can go as high as $144,000 per student.

To address this rising number of students, the Department of Education will invest more money in special education needs, like speech and occupational therapy, the mayor said.

Another major rising cost to the city’s budget is housing vouchers, specifically through the City Fighting Homelessness and Eviction Prevention Supplement, or FHEPS, program. 

The mayor is fighting a legal battle against implementing a package of laws the City Council passed in 2023 to expand eligibility for the vouchers. He promised to put the laws into effect as a candidate, but reversed once he took office due to budget pressures. 

Around 68,000 households rely on CityFHEPS vouchers, while another 47,000 could end up depending on the program if it’s expanded.

Mamdani plans to save $519 million within CityFHEPS, mostly through administrative changes, he said. 

The mayor announced new spending in his budget, including $40 million for the Office of Community Safety and $26 million towards hate crime prevention.

‘Conservative’ on New Spending

Levine, the comptroller, said there was a lot of “good news in this budget” but he was still cautious.

“We are entering into very uncertain economic times because of the threat of a recession and the impact of AI, and I want us to build a very strong fiscal foundation that grows reserves,” he said.

“There still is a reliance on a number of one-shot measures, and those are tools that are then going to be off the table next year. And we are looking at about a $7 billion shortfall for the following fiscal year.”

Levine did praise the mayor for his “pretty modest” additional spending.

Some of the additional money includes $31.7 million to the three library systems, $15 million to the Parks Department, $10 million to cultural organizations and $15 million to the City University of New York.

“It’s been a while since we’ve seen a mayor be this conservative on new spending,” Levine said about the spending. “It reflects why we’re in a better place today than we were in February.”

Mamdani had floated a property tax increase as a last-resort option to raise money to fill the gap, as Gov. Hochul continued to resist raising taxes.

Raising the property tax rate, which has not been done since Mayor Michael Bloomberg, is one of the few levers the mayor has to raise revenue. It was met with immediate backlash and was unlikely to pass in the Council. 

Hochul’s help to the city benefits the whole state, she said at an unrelated event Monday.

“He inherited a pretty significant financial mess,” Hochul said. 

Public Advocate Jumaane Williams took a cautious approach to the promised state aid.

“I think until that budget is passed, you don’t know if all that money is real,” he said following his briefing.

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Councilmember Vickie Paladino and the City Council settled their ethics feud over her anti-Muslim social media posts, with the Queens Republican agreeing to delete her tweets and remove any mention of her job on her personal accounts.

The charges filed March 2 by the Council’s ethics committee were permanently withdrawn, according to a court filing. In turn, Paladino withdrew a lawsuit she filed against the Council.

The Committee on Rules, Privileges, Elections, Standards and Ethics voted in early March to charge Paladino for social media posts she made after Zohran Mamdani was elected as the city’s first Muslim mayor, and a tweet she published after an ISIS-inspired terror attack at a Hanukkah celebration in Sydney, Australia.

In one now-deleted tweet, she posted that “we need to take very seriously the need to begin the expulsion of Muslims from western nations, or at the very least the severe sanction of them within western borders.” 

Under the settlement, Paladino will have to modify her account on X to remove “council woman” from her display name, and delete three tweets that are still up. 

Paladino will also have to make a public statement.

“To be clear, my personal social-media posts were not directed at any Council Member or staff,” she will be required to post. “I am responsible for the content, I never intended to make Council Members or staff feel unwelcome or unsafe in their work environment. I send a heartfelt ‘thank you’ to the court for facilitating this resolution.”

Councilmember Sandra Ung, the chair of the ethics committee, is also required to post that she believes “the resolution strikes the right balance between protection of council staff and the first amendment liberties of council members.”

Paladino was represented by Jim Walden, a failed 2025 mayoral candidate. He argued in at least one hearing that the tempest was a free speech issue, and provided examples of other Council members posting their own opinions about police officers or, in some cases, white people.

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Councilmember Shahana Hanif formally dropped her support of a bill that would ban 24-hour shifts for home health aides, and other council sponsors say they’ve proposed modifications to ensure people don’t lose crucial care. 

The loss of a co-sponsor for the “No More 24” bill comes as Council Speaker Julie Menin deferred a possible vote next week.

Menin hasn’t committed to bringing Introduction 303 to a vote when the Council meets May 14, according to a spokesperson who said it is moving through the legislative with no date set for a vote.

Those in favor of the bill say home health aides often work 24-hour shifts for disabled or elderly clients, but only get paid for 13 hours. Opponents say a lack of state funding for the bill’s requirement for two 12-hour shifts would harm people who require around-the-clock care.

Hanif (D-Brooklyn), who heads up the Council’s disability committee, chaired an oversight hearing Tuesday where she heard from disabled New Yorkers who spoke against the bill and urged her to take her name off as a sponsor. There are currently 17 co-sponsors.

“I hope it signals the seriousness required to move legislation impacting both workers and patients,” Hanif told THE CITY on Thursday.

Joseph Rappaport, executive director of the Brooklyn Center for Independence of the Disabled, praised Hanif’s decision and hoped others will follow.

“I think everybody realizes because this bill is flawed, and everybody also wants to make sure that these workers are protected,” he said. “I think people have figured out that if the bill went forward, some people will actually lose their jobs. Beyond that, people with disabilities will lose their coverage. Nobody wants that.”

A spokesperson for Councilmember Christopher Marte (D-Manhattan) said they were “hopeful that we can regain Councilmember Hanif’s support for this legislation and take seriously her point that this issue demands care and attention for both workers and patients.”

Other Council members told THE CITY they’ve pitched changes to make sure people who need the care get it, without workers being exploited. 

Councilmember Ty Hankerson (D-Queens) said he asked Marte to include an amendment that would let some workers get a waiver to work 24 hours. 

“I believe in the intent of the bill, 100% believe in the intent of the bill,” Hankerson said, adding that he would drop his support if the changes weren’t made. “I do think that there are some challenges that the bill presents that unfortunately on the council level we might not be able to solve.”

Councilmember Lincoln Restler (D-Brooklyn) said he’ll stay on as a sponsor but also wants changes.

Supporters of the bill, including elderly former home aides, camped outside of City Hall for weeks pushing Menin to bring it to a vote and for Mayor Zohran Mamdani to support it. 

Workers held a multi-day hunger strike before ending it after the speaker assured the bill would get a vote.

A spokesperson for Menin said she has “long fought for strong worker protections” and thinks more should be done to stop exploitation. 

“As part of the ongoing legislative process, the Council has updated the bill after many conversations with stakeholders,” the spokesperson said in a statement.

Though details of the Menin’s changes are not publicly available, POLITICO reported that the new version exempts union workers, delays its implementation for a year and allows home health workers to opt into longer shifts through the fall of 2027.

Vincent Cao, an organizer at the Chinese Staff and Workers’ Association, slammed Menin’s changes.

“We have fought for too long,” to allow people to continue working 24-hour shifts, he said. “It needs to end.”

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Gov. Kathy Hochul on Thursday announced a $268 billion state budget deal but the state assembly speaker shot back, saying there was no agreement.

Hochul said the disputed New York state budget agreement included a pied-à-terre tax on luxury second homes, investments in universal child care and more money for police officers on the subway. Her budget did not appear to include additional additional cash to help New York City fix its $5.4 billion deficit.

But Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie later told reporters Hochul had jumped the gun.

“There is no budget deal,” Heastie said, adding, “I don’t care what the governor says.”

“I said to her last night I was comfortable with her saying to y’all we were close  — it is close,” Heastie, of The Bronx, said. “But this is what’s wrong with this process. It’s like, ‘I’m gonna only talk about policy and when I think the legislature is giving me what I want on policy, then we’ll talk about money.’”

Heastie said he planned to send his members home on Thursday.

“We signed off on nothing major,” he said. “I’m never doing this again. Budgets are supposed to be about money, not policy.”

Hochul had no immediate comment.

Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, Hochul’s Republican challenger, said the budget snafu reminded him of the reality show “Deal or No Deal.”

“This is the left hand not knowing what the left hand is doing,” he said of the intraparty squabbling. “The fact of the matter is it’s the height of incompetence, it’s a lack of leadership.”

Budget One Month Late

Hochul’s budget, which was due April 1, is $13 billion more than last year’s and $8 billion more than Hochul initially proposed.

The “general agreement” on the budget was still light on details as the legislature will continue to go over the proposal in the coming days, the governor said.

“I’m not going to mince the words. The negotiations were not easy,” Hochul said.

“There were very substantive disagreements, tough choices and powerful special interests trying to influence the outcome, and the dysfunction out of Washington certainly doesn’t help.”

Here’s what we know about the state budget deal:

• The governor said legislators are finalizing details of on a pied-à-terre tax on luxury second homes to help “close the city’s budget gap without eroding its tax base or burdening hard-working New Yorkers.”

• Hochul said the budget includes her proposal to streamline environmental reviews for housing developments, letting some projects skip a 51-year-old state law requiring an extensive review that often holds up construction. 

• And the budget includes a “super speeder” bill which would require drivers with 16 or more speed-camera tickets over a year to install a device that would limit the car’s speed based on the local speed limit. 

Unanswered Questions

While the top question on Thursday was what led to the public breakdown between Hochul and Heastie — and when a proper deal might emerge — the details of key provisions were still up in the air.

• That second-home tax: It remains to be seen how the pied-à-terre tax would work. Specifically, how would the “value” of a second home be measured? Market values change, and assessed values are wildly out of whack, which could leave many lux pads out. There’s also a question about how to tax second homes owned by LLCs or shell companies. 
• Pension reforms: Hochul teased that she was scaling back plans to enact sweeping pension reform for the more than 700,000 public sector workers on what is called Tier 6, who receive smaller pension benefits than employees hired before 2012. Unions want changes that would cost $1.5 billion a year. It’s not clear how much — or how little — Hochul and the legislature are prepared to expand Tier 6 benefits. 
• Climate law: With qualms about affordability and facing headwinds from the Trump administration’s hostility to renewable energy projects, Hochul has made no secret that she’d like to weaken the state’s ambitious 2019 climate law. Under the budget deal, the governor can now implement those regulations in 2028, while using a different formula to count emissions — making it easier for the state to hit its reduction targets.

Hochul to City: I’ve Done Plenty

Hochul’s announcement did not include additional commitments of state funds for the cash-strapped city. 

Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Council Speaker Julie Menin last week pitched the state on a change to the pass-through entity tax, or PTET, which lets some business people keep state and local tax deductions that were limited by a 2017 federal law. They believe those changes could bring in $1 billion in revenue.

Hochul, who is running for reelection in November, immediately shot it down, and didn’t say whether the proposed budget includes any more of a bailout for the city. 

On Friday, she defended what she’s already doing for the five boroughs, pointing to more than $1 billion to support universal childcare and another $1.5 billion to help close the gap.

“We’ve been asked to do a lot for the city, we’ve given unprecedented amounts of support for the city,” she said.

The City Council approved an extension for Mayor Mamdani’s executive budget, which was due around May 1, because of the tardiness of the state’s budget. 

On Thursday, the mayor – a former state assemblymember –  said he planned to release his executive budget next week as planned. And he expected the city would get what it needed to help close the budget gap.

“I’m feeling hopeful about the direction of those negotiations,” he said at an unrelated press conference. “Those were productive conversations.”

Contributing: Samantha Maldonado, Claudia Irizarry Aponte.

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Carl Wilson is on track to win the special election to the City Council district representing the West Village, Chelsea, Hell’s Kitchen, and other parts of the west side of Manhattan on Tuesday, with a strong lead over Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s choice for the seat.

After one round of ranked-choice voting tabulations, Wilson led his closest rival, Lindsey Boylan, who rose to prominence as the first person to publicly accuse former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, her onetime boss, of sexual harassment, by a commanding 43% to 25%, with more than 93% of ballots counted. 

“I stand here tonight deeply honored to be your next Council member for District 3,” Wilson told jubilant supporters at his watch party at the bar Vers in Hell’s Kitchen.

Around 10 p.m., Boylan told supporters at the Chelsea Bell she had “called Carl to congratulate him on winning this race.” 

Council Speaker Julie Menin celebrated Wilson’s victory, which pitted Mamdani against the Manhattan Democratic establishment. “Tonight, we had a resounding victory by electing Carl Wilson as our next City Council Member,” Menin said in a social media post.

Election officials will keep counting ranked ballots until a candidate crosses 50% of votes.

Wilson will be sworn in to the City Council after the results are ratified, but will need to win the June 23 Democratic primary and the November general election in order to serve a full four-year term.

Wilson defeated Boylan despite her significant name recognition heading into the special election, which was declared when Councilmember Erik Bottcher vacated the seat in January upon his election to the state Senate. It was Boylan’s third run for office, after failed bids for Congress and Manhattan borough president in 2020 and 2021. Wilson had been Bottcher’s chief of staff.

The special election became a proxy war between the city’s democratic socialist faction, headed by Mayor Mamdani, and the Democratic establishment. 

Wilson was endorsed by all four of his immediate predecessors, including former Council speakers Christine Quinn and Corey Johnson, and several of the district’s political clubs.

Many of those same leaders despaired at the prospect of Boylan, a straight woman, representing a historically LGBTQ seat, one that is home to the Stonewall Inn, the cradle of the national gay rights movement. Like all four of his predecessors, Wilson is gay.

Wilson “built an unbelievable coalition,” Menin said. There was no immediate comment from the mayor.

A political action committee tied to Cuomo allies poured six-figure sums into ads attacking Boylan and supporting Wilson, her main opponent, New York Focus reported. (Cuomo has denied all accusations against him, by Boylan and other accusers.)

That group, Westside Progress, reported spending $144,500 starting last week on ads, texts and phone calls supporting Wilson.

“Don’t rank socialist Lindsey Boylan,” read one of the online ads, an apparent nod to her status as a dues-paying member of the Democratic Socialists of America, which did not endorse her.

Approximately 15,000 voters in the 3rd Council district cast their ballots, about half the amount that cast their ballots in the June 2025 mayoral primary. Still, turnout was high for a special election, where the number of ballots cast generally hovers below 10,000.

Under ranked choice voting, New Yorkers can select up to five candidates. If their top pick has the fewest first-choice votes, that candidate will be eliminated, and all of those votes are redistributed to second-choice picks. That process continues, until the winner has more than 50% of the remaining votes cast.

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Mayor Zohran Mamdani vetoed a controversial bill approved by the City Council last month instructing the police department to establish anti-protest “buffer zones” around schools and educational institutions.

A related bill calling for security perimeters around houses of worship passed by a veto-proof majority.

In a statement Friday, the mayor said he had reviewed both bills but found the one for education institutions “meaningfully different.” 

“The problem is how widely this bill defines an educational institution and the constitutional concerns it raises regarding New Yorkers’ fundamental right to protest,” he said in the statement. “As the bill is written, everywhere from universities to museums to teaching hospitals could face restrictions.”

Mamdani’s statement echoed the concerns of labor groups and other allies who said many buildings could technically be considered an educational facility, further limiting protests.

Speaker Julie Menin, a moderate Democrat, pushed for both bills, saying they were needed to combat rising antisemitism. She and her allies have said the so-called “buffer zone” proposals are meant to provide greater accountability in the NYPD’s protest protocols, and won’t infringe on free speech rights.

In a statement Friday, Menin said the purpose of the bill was safety.

“Ensuring students can enter and exit their schools without fear of harassment or intimidation should not be controversial,” she said. “This bill simply requires the NYPD to clearly outline how it will ensure safe access when there are threats of obstruction or physical injury, while fully protecting First Amendment rights.”

The veto is the latest confrontation between Mamdani and the Council, with the most recent being over the city’s contentious budget negotiations. 

The Council can attempt to override Mamdani’s veto in a new vote, or let it stand.

United Auto Workers Region 9A, which fiercely opposed the bill, sent a message to its members Friday morning taking credit for the veto and said it would begin whipping Council members to make sure any re-vote fails. The union represents thousands of educators and researchers at Columbia University and New York University.

Menin, the memo read, “is potentially going to attempt to override the veto by flipping multiple council votes.”

“We will begin a whipping strategy with Council members in the next week but for now, the most important thing is an overwhelming display of public support for this veto.”

The religious sites bill passed 44 to 5, a veto-proof majority, but the schools buffer-zone bill passed by a 30 to 19 margin.

Despite the overwhelming Council majority that supported the bill affecting places of worship, Mamdani, speaking in a social media video, portrayed his decision not to veto it as a matter of principle, adding that he nevertheless disagreed with “its framing of all protests as a security concern.”

In recent weeks, labor and community groups closely aligned with Mamdani have urged him to veto the bill, known as Intro 175, saying that it threatens free speech and worker rights. Legal groups including the New York Civil Liberties Union also strongly opposed the measure. 

Menin’s bills came as an answer to the widely-criticized police response to protesters who picketed the Park East Synagogue, which had rented space to an organization that helps Jews move to Israel and to settlements on the occupied West Bank, as well as the 2024 pro-Palestine encampments on college campuses.

A consortium of prominent Jewish organizations including the UJA-Federation of New York rebuked Mamdani on Friday, calling the planned veto “a profound failure of City Hall to demonstrate to all New Yorkers that our safety is a priority.”

On April 17, a representative of Deputy Mayor for Economic Justice Julie Su met with leaders of more than a dozen unions and the New York City Central Labor Council who pushed for a veto.

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Every fall, the Wall Street analysts who cover the real estate giant CBRE troop to the company’s local headquarters in the Met Life Building on Park Avenue to hear executives tell them about the state of business and why they should recommend the company’s stock to their clients.

Months ago, before the mayoral election, New York region CEO Mary Ann Tighe had given her presentation and answered the analysts’ questions when, throwing a curveball, she looked at the group and said, “Now I have a question for you.”

“How many of you live in the city?” she asked. About three quarters of the 29 analysts, who looked to be 35 or younger, raised their hands. “And how many of you intend to vote for Mamdani?” she continued. 

Most of the hands stayed up.

Tighe retells that story to make a point. CEOs may have spent millions trying to block the election of Mayor Zohran Mamdani and now are mobilizing to prevent tax increases on executives like themselves and their companies — but the people who work for them are on the mayor’s side. 

The dichotomy will be important as the city’s leading business group, the Partnership for New York City, crafts an aggressive new approach to Mamdani after its outgoing leader drew criticism during the mayoral campaign over her praise for the young democratic socialist.

But before they attempt to convince voters that the mayor’s progressive policies may harm New York, the partnership’s leaders may have to persuade their own employees.

An analysis by THE CITY found that Mamdani’s mayoral campaign received contributions of more than $242,000 from 1,971 employees of the 300 companies belonging to the partnership.

“You can’t just tell workers to do something and expect them to do it because it’s good for you,” said Bradley Tusk, a key political aide to Mayor Michael Bloomberg and one of the loudest voices calling on the partnership to be more assertive in the city’s rough-and-tumble politics. “If you can’t persuasively explain why it tangibly and directly matters to them, it won’t work.”

Mamdani’s Big Tech Base

The young talent that CEOs say are the reason they keep their companies in New York represent Mamdani’s base. A recent Marist poll showed that the mayor’s strongest approval ratings came from college graduates between the ages of 18 and 29.

Employees at tech companies led the list of contributors, even as Mamdani targets Big Tech for practices like making it difficult to cancel subscriptions.

Google employees – 323 of them, mostly software engineers and researchers – gave more money to Mamdani during his campaign than those from any other partnership company, followed by employees at Amazon and Meta. Google employees donated $55,726.61.

Roughly 40% of the partnership member employees who donated to Mamdani lived in Brooklyn, while nearly 23% reported Manhattan addresses, while others live outside of the city.

The average donation among employees in partnership members was $93, a little lower than the campaign’s final average contribution of $99, with the majority of them small-dollar donations, according to city Campaign Finance Board data.

Until recently, tech company executives skewed to the left, said Julie Samuels, CEO of the local tech trade group Tech: NYC.

“They are young, they live in Brooklyn and what’s interesting is not that they support Mamdani but that for the first time there is a split between tech workers and their bosses,” she said.

She also notes that tech executives have been mostly silent on the topic of the mayor — even as other CEOs work to block Mamdani’s efforts for higher taxes on the wealthy and corporations.

‘Adverse Reaction’ 

Steven Fulop, the former Jersey City mayor who became CEO of the partnership in January, says the anecdotes and campaign contributions do not necessarily reflect the views of the 800,000 people who work for member companies.

“People had an adverse reaction to the choices that were presented to the electorate in November, and he was best for those people,” Fulop said of Mamdani. “But that doesn’t speak to that segment embracing socialism.”

He says his task at the partnership isn’t to be for or against the mayor but to develop common sense policies to make New York a better place. He suggests it is too early for judgments.

“One hundred days into his term, people thought Eric Adams would be elected president,” Fulop said.

Tighe sees a benefit to the support for Mamdani within New York companies.

“What you have to remember is that, for young people, having a 34-year-old mayor is cool and having him as mayor makes that talent want to live here more,” she said.

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City Hall officials met last week with union and labor leaders who are pushing Mayor Zohran Mamdani to veto a controversial City Council bill that would establish anti-protest “buffer zones” around schools and educational facilities.

A representative of Deputy Mayor for Economic Justice Julie Su met via video call with leaders of more than a half a dozen unions and the New York City Central Labor Council, according to multiple sources who were at the meeting or briefed on the talks. 

Su’s representative gave no indication whether Mamdani would issue a veto, according to multiple sources. Last month the Council approved two bills creating protest “buffer zones,” one affecting houses of worship and the other targeting schools and “educational facilities.” 

“Mayor Mamdani is aware of the concerns raised regarding the potential for 175-B to limit the constitutional and labor rights of New Yorkers,” City Hall press secretary Joe Calvello said in a statement on Thursday, referring to the bill’s formal designation. “The Mayor will weigh these concerns seriously as he makes a final decision on this legislation.” 

The meeting came amid a growing pressure campaign from labor and other allies of Mamdani to veto the bill. Last week, several labor and community groups sent a letter urging him to veto the bill, describing it as a “radical overreach” that limits free speech and endangers New Yorkers.

Mamdani Faces Saturday Deadline

The two so-called “buffer zone” bills passed March 26 with the goal of targeting hate crimes across the city, with one bill related to religious sites and the other for schools and education facilities. The bills require the police department to create security perimeters during protests – instructing the NYPD to establish how far away the buffer zones would place demonstrators. 

Two unions that represent large numbers of college and university teaching staff — United Auto Workers Region 9A and Professional Staff Congress/CUNY — are leading the opposition to the bills, claiming that they would restrict their rights to strike or protest in their workplace.

The religious sites bill passed 44 to 5, a veto-proof majority, but the schools buffer-zone bill passed by a 30 to 19 margin — which the mayor could more likely successfully veto. 

Under the city charter, Mamdani has until Saturday to veto the bill or officially sign it into law. If he does neither, it automatically becomes law. 

A spokesperson, Dora Pekec, said Wednesday there was no update to what the mayor would do. 

Council Speaker Julie Menin, a moderate Democrat, pushed for the legislation as part of her efforts to combat antisemitism. She and her allies have maintained that the so-called “buffer zone” proposals are meant to provide greater accountability to the police department’s protest protocols, not to infringe on free speech rights.

Her proposals came as a response to the police’s widely-criticized response to protesters who picketed the Park East Synagogue, which had rented space to an organization that helps Jews move to Israel and to settlements on the occupied West Bank, as well as the 2024 pro-Palestine encampments on college campuses.

The New York Civil Liberties Union and other legal organizations say the bills are Constitutionally dubious.

Menin, speaking at the 92Y in Manhattan on Wednesday evening at an event on “the future of being Jewish in New York,” defended the bills and warned of a potential mayoral veto, City & State reported.

“I really hope that there is not a veto of that legislation, because I think that will lead to more divisiveness when we need less divisiveness,” Menin said.

Labor and community group leaders told THE CITY they were lobbying Council members who voted for the schools bill to change sides in a future vote to override a veto, sending nearly 11,000 emails to the mayor and Council members.

Representatives from multiple unions who met with Su’s team on April 17 expressed a variety of concerns about the bill, including the vagueness around what could be considered an “educational facility,” sources told THE CITY.

THE CITY reached out to several unions who attended the virtual meeting with the deputy mayor’s team. None agreed to comment on the meeting, citing the confidential nature of the conversations. The New York City Central Labor Council also declined to comment.

But some, in addition to the UAW and PSC-CUNY, have gone public with their opposition.

Representatives from healthcare unions, including the Committee of Interns and Residents-SEIU and 1199 SEIU, are among those calling on the mayor to veto the schools bill. They say many teaching hospitals where their members work could technically fall under the bill’s scope — meaning members would be barred from rallying outside in the case of a strike or other union action.

Teamsters Local 804, which represents UPS and Amazon truck drivers, has also called on a veto.

However there is no consensus among labor. 

Kevin Elkins, political director of the carpenters’ union, told THE CITY that his union does not oppose the buffer-zone bills. He said the bills allow the Mamdani administration the ability to implement the buffer zones as it sees fit, and that the union trusts the mayor’s commitment to protect worker and free speech rights.

“I think the mayor has demonstrated his commitment to labor several times over at this point, so I have full confidence in his administration’s ability to do that justly,” Elkins said.

Jewish and Catholic Leaders Voice Support

Religious organizations who favor buffer zones around schools also send their own letters to Mamdani.

“Schools are not just buildings, they are spaces where children should feel safe, supported, and ready to learn,” the letter said. “When access to those spaces is compromised, the impact is immediate and serious.”

The letter was signed by Jewish school leaders as well as the superintendents of schools within the Catholic Archdiocese of New York and the Diocese of Brooklyn, which covers nearly 150 schools across the five boroughs. 

Disclosure: Irizarry Aponte is a PSC-CUNY member in her role as an adjunct instructor at the Craig Newmark School of Journalism at CUNY.

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As she surveyed the packed aisles of her local supermarket on 116th Street in East Harlem, Chelssy T. cast a longing eye towards a vacant lot under the Metro-North tracks that’s the first announced site for one of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s city-owned grocery stores.

“Prices have gone up so much,” said Chelssy, 35, a lifelong Harlemite who asked to keep her last name private. “The other day I bought kimchi, a bag of onions and three plums, and that was like $30. I think it’s a great idea.” 

Mamdani says the municipal grocery stores are needed to bring fresh, affordable fare to so-called “food deserts” across the city, while even supporters say he has many challenges to deliver on that promise.

The mayor’s proposal, part of the popular affordability agenda that propelled him into office, calls for one city-owned grocery in each borough. He says costs will be lower since the stores won’t pay rent or property taxes. The city will hire a private company to handle operations and require basic items to be priced below the citywide average.

Unfortunately for Chelssy, she will have to wait until 2029 for potentially lower prices at the new Harlem store. Mamdani’s $30 million Manhattan grocery, slated to be built on the grounds of the 92-year-old La Marqueta public market, is the first to be announced but will be the last to open. City-owned groceries in The Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island will open in existing structures, officials said.

The delay for the Manhattan outlet is only one of a series of challenges the Mamdani administration will have to meet if its grocery plan is to work, experts — including strong advocates for the plan — told THE CITY.

As they compete against local and national chains, will five city-owned groceries have the leverage needed with suppliers to buy and sell at low prices? To what extent will taxpayers subsidize the stores? 

And, can city government deliver the kind of store where people actually want to shop?

“This has to deliver on universal appeal. It can’t be a poor people program,” said Fransico Yu, who has studied city-owned grocery stores for Community Food Advocates, a policy advocate group. “This can help people who are solidly in the middle class but are feeling the impact of food prices.”

The Big Box Battering Ram 

Mamdani, announcing the Manhattan grocery last week, said the private sector had fallen short, forcing the city to step in. 

“When corporations control every part of the food supply chain, prices go up, basic necessities become luxuries and workers and customers both lose,” Mamdani said in East Harlem last week. “A public option allows us to intervene where the market has failed.”

The administration pointed to a study by state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli showing that food prices in the New York metropolitan area grew 56% between 2013 and 2023 while they rose only 46% nationally. The report did not give reasons for the difference.

But Errol Schweizer, a longtime food executive whose resume includes serving in a top position at Whole Foods, says the reasons for the disparity are obvious. 

The city mostly lacks big-box giants like Walmart, whose enormous buying clout allows them to extract exceptionally low prices from suppliers and force down overall prices. New York has many more independent stores; their buying cooperatives don’t have the ability to win the lowest prices from suppliers.

Grocery stores in the five boroughs also are more unionized than elsewhere, which leads to higher labor costs at both union and non-union stores, Schweizer said. Mamdani has said the city-owned groceries will be unionized.

But Schweizer also disputes the idea that the Mamdani plan is radical or an attack on private enterprise. 

The Defense Department has operated commissary stores in military bases since 1967, he notes. The Pentagon spends $2 billion a year subsidizing the 235 stores, which have the scale to demand low prices from suppliers and save military families billions of dollars a year.

“Consider city-owned grocery stores as libraries,” Schweizer said. “They compete with bookstores, but we still consider them an important public service.”

The Competition Question

A few other cities are trying municipal grocery stores, but those are being placed in areas with no private competitors. 

Atlanta’s Azalea Fresh Market opened last summer with an $18 million public investment after city officials spent years trying to lure a chain store to the area. A publicly owned grocery store under construction in Madison, Wis., will be in a neighborhood where the nearest competitor is more than a mile away.

Kansas City last year closed its publicly funded store. After pumping in $18 million over 10 years, it was unable to lure enough customers to remain viable.

While Mamdani’s initiative is meant in part to serve neighborhoods that don’t have ready supermarket access, THE CITY found four grocery stores — and numerous fruit stands and bodegas — within a half mile of the site of his future Manhattan grocery, on Park Avenue between East 117th and 118th streets.

The farthest flung of those four supermarkets were a half-mile, or an 11-minute walk, away.

They offered staples at a wide range of prices. A can of Goya black beans cost $1.50 at a Fine Fare supermarket on Malcolm X Boulevard, while a City Fresh on Third Avenue and East 121st Street was asking $2.19. 

While the price of a gallon of milk held steady at $4.99 across all four stores, a pound of ground beef ranged from $5.99 to $9.99, and the cost of a gallon of Florida’s Natural orange juice stretched from $6.99 to a shocking $13.99.

There is no citywide tracker of basic grocery prices; the Mamdani administration is considering whether it needs to create one, spokesperson Cassio Mendoza said.

Discount Clout

The biggest challenge facing Mamdani’s grocery plan is whether the city-owned stores can operate efficiently and secure grocery staples at a cost that will allow the mayor to deliver on his promise of below-market prices.

When it comes to discounts, the market says: Go big or go home. The city may not have the clout to demand lower prices from suppliers. Schweizer estimates that the city would need about 25 stores to command substantial discounts — a far cry from what’s planned. 

Schweizer says that, like the Defense Department, the administration will have to subsidize costs.

Yu wondered what kind of private operator will be willing to run the store. The city will have to impose rules requiring substantial reporting to ensure the operator is following guidelines and providing quality fare. The policy advocate is among those who want the stores to tap into local farmers, although it isn’t clear if that is the most cost effective approach.

“Who is going to step up to deliver this kind of program?” he said.

The Mamdani administration says it is working out how to ensure that core staples are affordable. It says the operators will be attracted by a stable revenue source. This summer it expects to release the requirements for private operators.

“We expect any private operator to both maintain high labor standards and meet our affordability targets for a core staple of essentials,” spokesperson Mendoza said.

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