Saturday, October 31, 2026
Minneapolis Just Voted to Kill Its Community Safety Office. New York’s Council Wants One Anyway.
On Thursday, Minneapolis’s City Council voted to eliminate its Office of Community Safety, created in 2022 — councilmembers arguing, according to Reason, that the agency “had not delivered results worth the cost,” after a 2026 city audit found the Neighborhood Safety Department failed to properly oversee its contracts — one consultant billed over $270,000 with no receipt produced. Mayor Jacob Frey opposed the closure. New York’s reaction, one day later: a City Council hearing Friday on Council Member Lincoln Restler’s bill to build a standalone Department of Community Safety, which Restler says already has 34 co-sponsors — a veto-proof majority. Mamdani has already stood up a scaled-down version by executive order, which Reason reports gets $40 million in the FY 2027 budget, a down payment on the roughly $1 billion a year he originally proposed for the full department.
The takeaway — Minneapolis ran the experiment, read the audit, and pulled the plug. New York has seen the same movie and wants to buy the sequel, on a veto-proof majority. When a program can’t point to results, the answer from this crowd is always a bigger version of the program.
The Mayor Is “Confident” in a $500 Million Tax Haul. The Comptroller Said Up to $380 Million.
Zohran Mamdani says he’s “confident” the city’s rollout of a state-authorized pied-à-terre tax will raise $500 million. The arithmetic is less confident. Gothamist and WNYC report the city’s Department of Finance granted more than 8,800 of roughly 11,000 exemption applications, leaving fewer than 9,000 properties subject to the tax — and that City Hall hasn’t moved off its $500 million projection despite the exemptions. In April, Comptroller Mark Levine had estimated up to $380 million from roughly 11,200 homes, a gap of about $120 million. The tax also faces three separate lawsuits, including one from landlords who argue the rollout caused widespread confusion and should be restarted, and another from Steve Wynn and Wilbur Ross arguing the state law discriminates against wealthy nonresidents. Attorney Ben Williams, of Rosenberg & Estis, floated the obvious fallback — he said he’s curious whether the city will simply raise the tax rate if it misses the target.
The takeaway — A budget built on a number the city’s own comptroller doesn’t reach is a hope, not a plan. And when the hope comes up short, the safest bet in town is Williams’s: raise the rate on whoever’s left.
Mamdani Promised to Disband the NYPD’s Strategic Response Group. It’s Still Here.
Campaign promises are free; governing is where the invoice shows up. Mamdani pledged on the trail to disband the NYPD’s Strategic Response Group, and City & State reported on Oct. 15 that a City Hall spokesperson, Sam Raskin, said the administration “shares the goal” of disbanding the unit — which, as of that reporting, was still active. Gothamist’s Oct. 30 coverage of an unrelated Council hearing noted in passing that the Strategic Response Group remains operating. Council Member Chi Ossé’s CURB Act, which would bar the unit from responding to First Amendment events and from using kettling and tear gas, has 26 sponsors — a majority of the Council — but, as of City & State’s Oct. 15 reporting, no hearing had been scheduled: Public Safety Committee Chair Oswald Feliz, who says “no one is blocking your bill,” argues the issue requires executive action instead. Asked about it, the mayor offered only: “We will have more to share soon.”
The takeaway — The mayor wants credit for the promise and none of the consequences of keeping it. The unit’s still on the books, and the commissioner who runs it isn’t going anywhere either.