Mayor Zohran Mamdani's administration refused to appear at a New York City Council oversight hearing on its troubled pied-à-terre tax rollout, citing pending litigation, a rationale Council members from both sides of the aisle rejected as evasive.
The Department of Finance submitted written testimony instead of sending Commissioner Richard Lee to face lawmakers Tuesday, leaving Council Governmental Operations Chair Gale Brewer to read the commissioner's own words into the record while an empty chair sat where the city's top tax official should have been. Adam Daly reported that the administration had asked the Council to postpone the hearing; lawmakers declined.
The hearing was called to examine the rollout of a new surcharge on high-value residential properties not used as primary residences, a tax that Council members say they support in principle but that has generated confusion, legal challenges, and a growing backlash from homeowners who received notices they may not have owed.
At the center of the dispute is a supplemental property assessment roll the Department of Finance published in July. The roll listed approximately 960,000 properties. Of those, roughly 17,000 received initial determination letters indicating their owners might owe the new surcharge.
The surcharge targets one-, two-, and three-family homes valued above $5 million, and condominium and cooperative units valued at $1 million or more, when the property is not the owner's primary residence. But the sheer breadth of the roll, and the number of homeowners who appear to have been flagged incorrectly, drew sharp criticism from Council members and outside witnesses alike.
Brewer used her own home to illustrate the problem. She told colleagues her name appeared on the supplemental roll even though she has lived at the property as her primary residence since 1994. If a veteran Council chair can get swept up in a dragnet meant for absentee luxury-property owners, ordinary homeowners have reason to worry.
Staten Island Council Member Kamillah Hanks called the publication of more than 900,000 names and addresses a "hit list of the haves and the have-nots" and a "scarlet letter." She stressed that the hearing was not about opposing the tax itself.
"We really aren't here to dispute the pied-à-terre tax. This hearing is about everyday New Yorkers."
As of Tuesday, DOF data showed 9,884 exemption applications had been started, 5,001 had been completed, and just 2,318 had been approved. The agency extended the deadline for challenges to September 18, an implicit acknowledgment that the original timeline was too compressed for the volume of disputes it generated.
City Hall's rationale for skipping the hearing rested on a single phrase: "ongoing litigation." A spokesperson announced Monday that the administration would submit written testimony instead. Commissioner Lee's written statement said "pending and active litigation precludes me" from appearing in person, though he added he "would have welcomed" the chance to answer questions directly.
Council members were not persuaded. Frank Morano, whose family members are plaintiffs in the lawsuit challenging the rollout, rejected the litigation excuse outright.
"Litigation doesn't suspend legislative oversight. We're asking basic questions about how a major tax was administered. So when the administration refuses to sit here and answer them, I think New Yorkers are entitled to ask a very simple question: What are they hiding?"
Even Finance Committee Chair Linda Lee, who took a more measured tone, acknowledged the awkwardness. She said lawmakers understood "the sensitivity of testifying while this matter is before the courts", but the Council still declined to postpone. Brewer described the entire proceeding as "strange."
The administration's refusal to appear is part of a pattern that has defined Mamdani's approach to mounting pressures during his tenure: avoid the room, issue a statement, and hope the news cycle moves on.
Charles Diamond, an attorney who served in the prior Adams administration for nearly a decade, testified that he had personally declined individual litigation-sensitive questions while still showing up before the Council. He called the administration's blanket refusal "unacceptable."
"It is utterly, utterly bizarre."
That was Diamond's assessment of watching Brewer read the finance commissioner's own testimony into the record because the commissioner would not sit in the chair himself.
The administration's decision to skip the hearing contradicted what the mayor himself said just five days earlier. At an August 13 press conference, Mamdani told reporters he had "confidence in our administration officials being able to navigate what are often concurrent obligations, both whether it be to a hearing or to an existing lawsuit."
By Saturday, Mamdani had delivered remarks at the Floral Park Indian Day Parade and headed upstate for a week-long vacation. On Monday, the day before the hearing, City Hall reversed course and announced the no-show.
Spokesperson Matt Rauschenbach defended the decision after the hearing, saying City Hall had made a "good faith effort" to move the hearing to a later date and did not believe appearing would be "prudent and in the legal interest of the City." He also pointed out that the lawsuit was brought in part by family members of a sitting Council member, a reference to Morano.
Grace Rauh, executive director of the good-government group Citizens Union, was less forgiving. She called the administration's refusal "a blow to basic accountability standards."
"It is the City Council's job to ask tough questions, get numbers and data, and give the public a glimpse behind the government's curtain. It is the executive's job to respond."
The litigation the administration cited as its reason for staying away is itself expanding. On Tuesday, the same day as the hearing, attorney Randy Mastro notified Staten Island Supreme Court Justice Wayne Ozzi that plaintiffs had amended their petition to add four more individuals, all described as longtime city residents who received notices suggesting they may owe the surcharge.
Mastro, a former first deputy mayor in the Adams administration, added the new plaintiffs to counter the city's argument that part of the case had become moot after one original petitioner received an exemption following the initial filing. Justice Ozzi had temporarily blocked parts of the rollout earlier in August. The city appealed that block and has continued implementing the surcharge while the case proceeds.
Both sides are scheduled to appear before Ozzi on August 31 for a hearing on whether the rollout can continue while the broader legal challenge plays out. New York Law School professor Stephen Louis previously described the plaintiffs' principal claims as "fairly weak," but the case has not been resolved, and the administration's own conduct is giving critics fresh ammunition.
Among the most concrete concerns raised at the hearing: the burden the surcharge places on cooperative apartment buildings. Mary Ann Rothman, executive director of the Council of New York Cooperatives and Condominiums, testified that state law makes co-ops responsible for collecting the surcharge from affected shareholders and remitting it to DOF.
If a shareholder refuses to pay, the building could be forced to tap its reserves, assess other shareholders, or borrow money to keep its property taxes current. Rebecca Poole, also with the co-op council, said buildings are already considering changes to proprietary leases and could face legal, insurance, or mortgage complications from unpaid surcharges. The organization is seeking a change in state law that would have DOF collect directly from individual shareholders.
That is not a small-bore administrative detail. It means a single non-paying unit owner in a co-op could trigger financial consequences for every other resident in the building, people who have nothing to do with the pied-à-terre tax and may not even know it exists.
Ana Champeny, vice president for research at the Citizens Budget Commission, described the rollout as "rocky," blaming limited legislative vetting, a compressed implementation timeline, and inadequate communication. She said DOF's decision to publish the supplemental roll "appears reasonable" under state law and noted the information at the center of privacy concerns was already publicly available in city databases. But "reasonable under the law" and "well-executed" are not the same thing.
The broader pattern is familiar to anyone watching Mamdani's policy record: ambitious progressive goals, sloppy implementation, and an administration that treats legitimate questions as personal attacks.
With no administration officials to question, Brewer and Linda Lee spent roughly 16 minutes at the end of the hearing reading through 20 sets of questions they had prepared for DOF and the Tax Commission. They announced the questions would be submitted in writing. A city official provided partial answers after the hearing concluded, a process that denied the public any chance to watch its government answer in real time.
Commissioner Lee said in his written testimony that the supplemental roll "largely involved republishing data" from the city's May assessment roll and that the notices homeowners received are "not a tax bill" and do not represent a final determination that the owner owes the surcharge. Those reassurances might carry more weight if the man making them had been willing to deliver them in person and take follow-up questions.
Council Member Eric Dinowitz, who said he supports the surcharge, still insisted officials should "show up and answer basic questions about the rollout." Brewer summed up the bipartisan frustration: "It's the tax we are for. It's the implementation that has some challenges."
Even national commentators have taken notice of the gap between the Mamdani administration's ambitions and its capacity to execute. The pied-à-terre tax hearing was supposed to be a chance for City Hall to demonstrate competence. Instead, it demonstrated contempt, for the Council's oversight role, for the homeowners caught in the rollout's errors, and for the basic principle that elected officials answer to the public.
Meanwhile, the mayor was already facing vocal public opposition before he left town. An administration that cannot be bothered to show up when lawmakers ask how a major tax was administered is an administration that has confused governing with avoiding accountability.
When the people who owe answers refuse to sit in the chair, the chair still tells the story.
