Zo-and-tell!
City Hall officials must cough up their emails and texts with the powerful Rent Guidelines Board that Mayor Zohran Mamdani allegedly bigfooted into fulfilling his promised rent freeze, a judge ruled Wednesday.
Judge Brendan Lantry — the former chair for the Staten Island GOP — granted a narrow order for the behind-the-scenes communications to see if supposedly independent rent board members illicitly colluded with Mamdani’s team.
“The question naturally arises: how would the Mayor comply with his ‘guarantee’ to the voters to ‘freeze’ the rent unless he, or his staff, communicated with the Board to ensure that the Board refrained from imposing any rental increase?” Lantry wrote.
Board members in June passed a rent freeze on both one-year and two-year leases for the Big Apple’s roughly 1 million rent-stabilized units.
The decision allowed Mamdani to claim a major victory on his socialist agenda, but prompted accusations that the outcome was rigged.
A coalition of city landlords quickly mounted a legal challenge over the vote, as accusations flew that Mamdani stacked the independent board with loyalist tenant activists.
While the landlords challenging the hike were seeking permission to demand an even broader swath of municipal messages, the limited order is still a notable victory for critics pushing to probe the Rent Guidelines Board vote.
“The court acknowledges that discovery in a special proceeding is rare,” Lantry wrote. “It is also rare (in fact, it is unprecedented) for a candidate for Mayor of New York City to guarantee that the Board, an entity that the parties concede is independent from the Mayor’s Office, will freeze the rent upon his election to office.”
Lantry also noted other rarities, including the resignation of RGB board member Christina Smyth, who desired the vote as a pre-decided “sham.”
The order for City Hall communications with the RGB also covers the Mayor’s Office of Mass Engagement, the Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants and the Mayor’s Office of Management and Budget.
The order does exclude communications between Mamdani and his staff, as well as internal comms at the RGB.
A discovery conference is set for Sept. 21.
Read the full article here
