NYC COGE 2026: Mamdani Launches a Commission on Government Efficiency

Sixteen commissioners, ten public hearings, and a hard November deadline now stand between New York City's existing charter and whatever Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani's new Commission on Government Efficiency decides to put before voters.

A new commission, and an old one shut down

On May 28, 2026, Mayor Mamdani announced the Commission on Government Efficiency, known as COGE, and named former United States Ambassador to South Africa Patrick Gaspard as its chair. Gaspard previously served as executive director of the Democratic National Committee, as president of the Center for American Progress, and as an advisor on Mamdani's mayoral campaign. The proposed executive director is Ann Cheng, who served as Director of Strategic Initiatives in the New York State Governor's Office before being tapped for the city role.

Hours before the announcement, Mamdani dissolved a separate Charter Revision Commission that had been seated in the final hours of former Mayor Eric Adams's term. That earlier body was not theoretical. It had held its first public hearing the same week and had already floated an open-primaries question for the ballot. Its pro bono counsel, William Mastro, told reporters the commission would "continue to do its work," even as the new administration moved to wind it down. The practical effect of the dissolution is that Mamdani, not Adams's appointees, now controls which questions reach voters this fall.

A Charter Revision Commission in New York City is a body empowered to study the City Charter, the document that lays out how city government is structured and how it operates, and to propose amendments that go directly to voters on the next general election ballot. It does not need the City Council's approval to put a question on the ballot. That is the source of its power, and the reason both administrations wanted to control it.

Who sits on COGE

The commission has sixteen members in total, drawn from labor, housing, government, business, and academia. Henry A. Garrido, the executive director of District Council 37, the city's largest municipal employees union, sits on the panel alongside Carlina Rivera, the former City Councilwoman now serving as president and CEO of the New York State Association for Affordable Housing, known as NYSAFAH. Kathryn Wylde, the longtime urban-policy figure who led the Partnership for New York City, brings the business voice. Former Manhattan Borough President Ruth Messinger and Marc V. Shaw, a CUNY governance advisor and former senior city budget and finance official, anchor the government side.

The remaining named commissioners are Marco A. Carrión, Susan Kang, Kapil Longani, Theodore Moore, Ana Oliveira, Dawn Pinnock, Esther Rosario, Barika X. Williams, and Emma Wolfe. The mix is deliberately broad. It is also notably aligned with constituencies the Mamdani administration would need behind any structural changes it tries to put on the ballot.

The schedule is unusually compressed. COGE's initial public meeting is set for June 4, 2026, at 5 p.m. The first public hearing follows on June 9, 2026, at 5 p.m., with nine additional hearing dates to be announced. All of it leads to the November 2026 general election ballot, on which any proposed charter amendments will appear for New York City voters. That gives the commission roughly six months to interview the public, draft amendments, and finalize ballot language for a city of more than eight million people.

The pitch, and the contrast with DOGE

The name was the first thing critics noticed. COGE rhymes with DOGE, the federal Department of Government Efficiency, and Mamdani addressed the comparison directly. He framed the federal effort as one about "slashing and burning" services, and his own as the opposite, an initiative meant to make city agencies faster at delivering housing, transit, and child care. "We are instead delivering on something that we know many New Yorkers, frankly many Americans, care about, which is government efficiency," the mayor said at the announcement.

The framing matters because the substantive scope is wide. According to the commission's stated charge, COGE will examine outdated bureaucratic barriers slowing housing, transit, and child care; whether agencies have the authority and tools they need; modernizing budget practices; and additional reforms surfaced through public engagement. Gaspard described the target in plain terms. "New Yorkers need a government that can urgently build infrastructure, promote small business growth, and make the city more livable," the chair said. Cheng, the proposed executive director, was blunter about the diagnosis. "City agencies are hamstrung by outdated constraints and unnecessary requirements," she said.

Mamdani's own line, delivered at the announcement, was the one his press team has pushed hardest: "New Yorkers deserve a government that works as hard as they do, and a government as careful with their money as they are."

The fiscal backdrop

The political launch sits on top of a budget picture that gives the efficiency argument real teeth. The New York City Comptroller's Office reported that the Mamdani administration's spending plans add roughly $4.14 billion to fiscal year 2026, $5.39 billion to fiscal year 2027, and an average of about $8.46 billion per year across fiscal years 2028 through 2030. The Comptroller's analysis also notes that the administration's plan relies on unspecified citywide savings and a proposed property tax adjustment to close the resulting gap.

That is the gap COGE is implicitly being asked to help fill, though the commission's official brief is about charter structure, not line items. If "unspecified citywide savings" are going to become specified, they will come from the kind of operational changes a charter revision can authorize: who approves what, how quickly a permit moves, how the city budgets across agencies. The mayor has not announced any specific cuts, layoffs, or targeted agencies, and the commission has not yet held a public meeting. Everything is still at the framing stage.

What a charter commission can actually do

The leverage of a Charter Revision Commission comes from a single procedural fact. Proposals it approves go directly to voters, bypassing the City Council's legislative authority. The Council can object, lobby, or campaign against a question, but it cannot block it from the ballot. That is why control of which commission is sitting was worth dissolving the prior body the morning of the announcement.

The track record, though, is mixed. New York has stood up charter commissions and blue-ribbon efficiency panels for decades. Some produced structural reform that reshaped how the city is run. Others produced thick reports that sat unimplemented on a shelf. The current commission will face the same test on a tighter timeline than most of its predecessors had. Between the June 4 initial meeting and the November ballot, ten public hearings will move across the five boroughs to take testimony before final amendments are drafted.

The commission cannot amend the charter on its own. Whatever the sixteen commissioners agree to send forward becomes a question, and the question is then decided by voters in November. The mayor has set the agenda and chosen the people who will run it. The voters get the last word. Between now and the fall, the work is public, the timeline is fixed, and the legal route to the ballot is one the City Council cannot interrupt.

Sources

• NYC Mayor's Office
• CBS New York
• THE CITY
• NY1
• Mirage News