Mayor Zohran Mamdani has frequently spoken about his hopes of streamlining city government, cutting through the red tape and bureaucratic roadblocks that stymie progress.
According to his Commission on Government Efficiency, one place he could focus is the thousands of data-heavy reports city agencies are legally required to publish on a regular basis. These reports — usually mandated by City Council bills aimed at increasing transparency and oversight — have the agencies disclose their performance on all sorts of metrics, across all kinds of programs and services.
Many of the reporting requirements are well-intentioned, but create unnecessary burdens on agency staff, bog down city operations and duplicate disclosures, the commission’s final report from late July found. It said an average of more than 80 reporting laws were passed or updated each year from 2020 through 2025, while a city Department of Records and Information Services portal showed more than 2,000 separate, mostly recurring reporting requirements. And a survey COGE conducted among all city agencies found more than 125,000 staff hours are spent annually on reports, generating significant costs.
“These reporting requirements continuously grow, imposing an ever-increasing strain on agency resources, as agencies struggle to keep up with writing, coordinating and timely submitting all mandatory reports,” the commission wrote. “Each of these reports necessitates staff time and energy that may be better spent on implementing policies, rather than writing about them.”
‘There’s a Disconnect’
COGE isn’t alone in raising the issue, long a source of complaints from some good-government groups, agency staff and civic watchdogs.
Tal Roded, a data scientist for LinkedIn who runs a data-focused Substack called NYCuriosity, this month released a Council “obligations tracker” that culled through every local law enacted since 2014 and identified the various tasks they assign to each agency. His research found laws passed over the last 12 years created roughly 8,300 obligations from 2,100 laws, including about 1,550 required reports, or about a fifth of all the tasks.
Nearly 850 of the reports recur at least once per year, according to Roded’s analysis — meaning the Council established about 70 such requirements each year on average. The Department of Education had the most reporting obligations, at 136, followed by the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, at 89, and the NYPD, at 79, his tracker shows.
As a member of Manhattan Community Board 3, which covers the East Village, the Lower East Side and Chinatown, Roded said he routinely heard from elected officials who “love to brag about all the legislation they passed,” even as government operations often seemed sluggish.
He said he started to think: “How is everything not fixed if there’s all these great bills being passed all the time on the city and state level?” So he created and released a fiscal impact tracker on bills before widening his reach to include agency duties that don’t necessarily have an upfront cost.
“With a lot of this legislation, there’s a disconnect between the legislator talking about what they passed and the agency or the body being tasked with carrying out this legislation,” Roded told The City Reporter in an interview.
A Potential Solution — For Now Unused
Mamdani’s COGE approved five ballot proposals for the November election that seek to improve different parts of city government, but none of the measures target the reams of agency reporting requirements. The commission, however, did recommend a path for alleviating these administrative burdens: strengthening an obscure city entity called the Report and Advisory Board Review Commission, which goes over required reports to determine which can be waived or removed.
This panel, housed in the Mayor’s Office of Operations, was formed through a ballot measure through a 2010 charter revision commission. But RABRC has eliminated only 28 reports since 2012, according to COGE, and its last public meeting was in December 2024.
“The mechanism is there, but it’s not being used,” Roded said.
Mayoral spokesperson Jimmy Wyderko didn’t directly address RABRC’s role in streamlining city operations, but said in a statement that “COGE’s advisory board will continue to bring forward new ideas and work with partners across government to cut through bureaucracy and deliver the services New Yorkers deserve.” The efficiency commission will transition to an advisory board after the general election to counsel Mamdani on ongoing reforms, according to his office.
Grace Rauh, executive director of the nonprofit Citizens Union, said her organization hoped RABRC could reconvene to take a more thorough look at potentially unnecessary reporting requirements, instead of allowing them to snowball.
“Often the go-to solution is, ‘We need more information, so we’re going to require this city agency to release an annual report tracking this problem, so we can better address it,’” she said. “I can appreciate that instinct — we need data to better understand a problem. But when we keep piling more and more requirements on top of city agencies, it becomes really untenable.”
The Goldilocks Question
Testifying before COGE this summer, government watchdog group Reinvent Albany suggested limits on new reporting bills from the Council — especially one-time reports and reports on information that isn’t critical to the public.
“We’d rather see the Council use more oversight hearings, informal information requests of agencies and actually utilize its subpoena power, when necessary, to gain information from city agencies, rather than pass more laws requiring reports,” Alex Camarda, senior policy adviser at the nonprofit, said in testimony submitted for a July 13 hearing.
The City Council’s Compliance Division, which tracks reports required by law, reached out to city agencies this year to get feedback on specific requirements, and councilmembers are considering legislation based on what they hear, according to a Council official.
“Reporting requirements in local laws allow the Council, members of the media and general public to understand how well city agencies are carrying out their responsibilities,” Rendy Desamours, a spokesperson for Council Speaker Julie Menin, said in a statement, noting the legislature has repealed some reports, task forces and pilot programs. “These reports provide the basis for oversight hearings, spur policy changes and measure the success of the city’s efforts.”
Paul Wolf, president emeritus of the watchdog New York Coalition for Open Government, said there should be a middle ground between overloading agencies with reporting requirements and withholding potentially revelatory information.
“The best solution to these issues is for government agencies to proactively post as much information online as possible in ways that are easily accessible,” he said.
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The post Mamdani Wants To Speed up NYC Government. He Could Tackle Cumbersome Agency Reports. appeared first on The City Reporter.
