Operations manual

The Mamdani Franchise — an independent, non-partisan, open-source playbook. Not affiliated with the Mayor of New York City, the City of New York, or any campaign or party. Status: DRAFT v0.2 (Stage 2 synthesis + NYC Open Data lab) · Evidence cut-off: 2026-11-10.

Evidence IDs refer to rows in the evidence register. Every claim cites an ID with URL and date; unverified items are marked [UNVERIFIED]. Budget mechanics are covered in Items 2 and 7; this chapter covers the operating instruments — what was ordered, by whom, with what deadline, and whether it was delivered.

Summary disclosure

The administration ran operations mainly through executive orders with explicit deadlines, built around three moves:

• A Day-1 reset: EO 1 revoked the prior mayor's executive orders issued on or after Sept. 26, 2024. EO 2 set a five-deputy-mayor structure. Three housing orders created the tenant office (EO 3) and the LIFT (EO 4) and SPEED task forces (EV-033 EV-009 EV-034).
• Time-boxed task forces that reported in public:
  • SPEED reforms, May 13 (EV-191).
  • The Rental Ripoff hearings report, July/August (EV-047).
  • The LIFT tracker, July 30 (EV-193).
• An agency savings structure: EO 12 placed Chief Savings Officers in every agency. They identified ~$1.7B by March, and a second 2.5% round was ordered in July (EV-039 EV-041 EV-048).

Delivery cadence: the administration used public milestone moments rather than a published performance-management routine:

• a 100-days website (EV-085)
• a "Municipal Madness" public vote on 16 repairs promised within 100 days (EV-043)
• a public LIFT site tracker (EV-193)

No internal "stat" meeting cadence has been documented (see Gaps).

Service outcomes are mixed and are not attributed to either administration. The FY2026 Mayor's Management Report covers July 2025–June 2026, so half of it falls under the prior administration.

• Gains, per the City's release: pothole repairs +27%, murders −20%, affordable-housing completions +20% (EV-049).
• Slower ambulances: end-to-end response to life-threatening emergencies went from 11:21 to 13:09 (+1:48, about +16%) (EV-050). City & State reported a ~20% rise on a different measure (EV-188).
• Slower police response: response to crimes in progress also slowed (EV-188).
• Slower 311: 75% of high-volume calls were answered within 30 seconds (target 80%), and the average wait rose to 43s from 25s. The City attributes this partly to a severe winter; that explanation was not tested here (EV-187 EV-218).

311 complaint-level data (calendar years, NYC Open Data): compared with 2024 and 2025, two results depart from the earlier trend (the third departure in this playbook, Office of the Mayor headcount, is in Item 6):

• Heat-complaint backlog: 94.1% of Jan–Mar 2026 heat complaints were closed within 7 days, vs 99.6% in 2025 and 99.8% in 2024. On Nov 10, 2026, 5.5% were still open (EV-201 EV-202).
• Street Condition slowdown and backlog: median close time 1.56 days vs 1.08 (P90 11.78 vs 5.73). Requests also rose 86.3%, which reflects demand and is context for the slowdown, not a departure in itself (EV-205 EV-206).

Everything else continues patterns that predate January 2026:

• Heat close times began lengthening in 2025.
• Duplicate closures have risen and violations issued have fallen every year since 2024.
• Heat volumes rise every year.
• Police-handled complaint close times were roughly unchanged (EV-201 EV-203 EV-204 EV-207).

Causes, including weather, were not analysed.

Structural follow-through: the administration replaced the prior mayor's last-day charter commission with its own Commission on Government Efficiency (COGE). Voters approved all five of COGE's "faster government" charter proposals on Nov 3, 2026 (EV-196 EV-127).

Transferability: Time-boxed task forces, a public tracker and savings officers transfer to almost any city. A Day-1 blanket rescission of executive orders transfers mechanically, but it has side effects that need to be reviewed first. A charter commission depends on the local charter and on state home-rule law.

Executive-order ledger (orders with deliverables)

EO numbers confirmed against the City's EO pages: EO 3 (tenant office), EO 4 (LIFT). An early CBS report labelled the tenant order "EO 1"; that was wrong (EV-034).

Service-delivery scorecard (FY2026 Mayor's Management Report)

FY2026 = July 2025–June 2026; the first half is the prior administration.

Context: the City attributes longer 311 waits to a severe winter (45.5 inches of snow; ~161,000 more high-volume calls in Jan–Mar 2026). This is the City's explanation and was not tested here (EV-187 EV-188 EV-218). The City's own release highlighted only the gains (EV-049).

Measures differ across sources. The MMR's "pothole closure time" is an average over the fiscal year (EV-050); the Open Data figures below are calendar-year medians and percentiles of individual requests (EV-206). FY2026 MMR figures cover Jul 2025–Jun 2026, half under the prior administration.

311 complaint-level results (NYC Open Data, calendar years)

Source: 311 Service Requests (erm2-nwe9), pulled 2026-11-10 and independently re-checked. Calendar windows, so no fiscal-year straddle; every 2026 window starts Jan 1, 2026. Close-time medians and percentiles use closed requests only. These are descriptive comparisons; causes (including weather) were not analysed. "—" = not in the register.

How to read this table: rows marked Departure belong to two measures only: the heat backlog and the Street Condition slowdown/backlog. All other rows continue earlier patterns or are volume changes, which reflect demand rather than performance.

The three departures are the heat backlog (EV-201 EV-202), the Street Condition slowdown and backlog (EV-205 EV-206), and Office of the Mayor growth (Item 6). No cause has been established for any of them.

Key questions — status

Findings by phase

Transition (Nov 4 – Dec 31, 2025)

Summary: Operations planning ran through 17 transition committees, including Government Operations & Technology (EV-004). The Deputy Mayor for Operations pick (Julia Kerson) was a deputy to the State director of operations and a former MTA and City Hall operations staffer (EV-200). No published transition operations plan has been found.

Tactics

Reversals / critiques in this phase: None found.

Evidence IDs: EV-004 EV-200

First 100 days (Jan 1 – Apr 10, 2026)

Summary: On Day 1 the administration reset the order book (EO 1), set the chain of command (EO 2) and launched three housing instruments. Emergency orders followed on Jan 5–6 for jail and shelter compliance, then EO 8 (Rental Ripoff hearings with statutory-style deadlines) and EO 12 (Chief Savings Officers, Jan 29). EO 15 created the Office of Community Safety in March. To mark Day 100 the City launched a 100-days website and ran "Municipal Madness," a 16-item public bracket vote with 21,000+ votes, with the Mayor personally doing the winning cleanup. Vital City's independent 11-item scorecard gave no top grades: 7 "It's a start" and 4 "Insufficient progress," including civil-service reform and OMB modernization. The Preliminary MMR, released in March, carried the new administration's name but covered only prior-administration months.

Heat complaints in this window (Jan–Mar 2026):

• Volume: 168,742 complaints, +25.7% on 2025, continuing a yearly rise (EV-204).
• Close time: median 1.99 days vs 1.74 in 2025 and 1.30 in 2024. The lengthening began in 2025 (EV-201).
• Backlog (departure from trend): 94.1% were closed within 7 days, vs 99.6% in 2025 and 99.8% in 2024. By Nov 10, 2026, 9,351 (5.5%) were still open, mostly marked 'owner notified, condition still open' (EV-201 EV-202).
• How complaints were closed: 34.7% were closed as duplicates of a building-wide complaint, rising every year since 2024. 75.7% were closed without a completed inspection (79.9% in 2025). Violations were issued on 3.8% (5.8% in 2024, 5.0% in 2025) (EV-203).

Causes, including the January cold snap, were not analysed. EV-033 EV-009 EV-034 EV-038 EV-037 EV-039 EV-098 EV-085 EV-043 EV-044 EV-189

Tactics

Reversals / critiques in this phase:

• EO 1's sweep drew criticism from Israel's consul general and support from CAIR-NY (EV-035).
• Vital City noted the cancellation of a costly AI chatbot contract with no replacement, and the sunsetting of the Office of Public Realm (EV-044).
• A City Limits analysis found most heat and hot-water complaints during the January cold snap were flagged as "duplicates" and closed without inspection (EV-190). Over the full Jan–Mar 2026 window, the Open Data pull shows 34.7% closed as duplicates and 75.7% closed without a completed inspection. The duplicate share continued its yearly rise (24.2%, 29.6%, 34.7%); the share closed without a completed inspection was within the 2024–25 range (EV-203). The Rental Ripoff report later set an inspection rule (see Year 1).

Evidence IDs: EV-009 EV-033 EV-034 EV-035 EV-036 EV-037 EV-038 EV-039 EV-041 EV-043 EV-044 EV-085 EV-098 EV-189 EV-190 EV-195 EV-199 EV-201 EV-202 EV-203 EV-204

First budget (FY27: Preliminary Feb → Adopted Jun 2026)

Summary:

• SPEED report (May 13). It set reforms across four development stages: environmental review, pre-development, permitting and lease-up. The aims are to cut timelines by up to two years for projects that need rezoning, and to halve lease-up from 210 to under 100 days, partly by shortening the housing-lottery application window from 60 to 21 days. The task force held roundtables with 100+ stakeholders and reviewed 500+ recommendations. CBC's president praised it (EV-191 EV-192).
• Charter commission swap (May 27–28). Using a provision in the State budget, the Mayor dissolved the charter revision commission his predecessor had appointed on his last day. He then appointed COGE, a 15-member commission chaired by Patrick Gaspard, to review the whole Charter for efficiency, modernization, and savings, reserve and budget practices. Members of the dissolved commission threatened to sue, and Citizens Union warned about mayors' use of the charter process (EV-196 EV-197).
• Hiring restriction. The prior administration's 2-for-1 rule (one hire for every two departures, in place since February 2024) was lifted in May 2026, per the Comptroller; officials described ending it as a February decision (EV-271 EV-270 EV-172 EV-272). Details in Item 6.

Tactics

Reversals / critiques in this phase: The commission's name invited comparisons to the federal DOGE (EV-196 EV-197). NY1 described members as close allies of the Mayor (EV-197).

Evidence IDs: EV-127 EV-172 EV-191 EV-192 EV-196 EV-197

Year 1 (Jul – Dec 2026)

Summary:

• Rental Ripoff report (July/August). It met EO 8's deadline and set 23 actions, including inspecting every non-anonymous heat complaint starting October 2026 (EV-047).
• Second savings round (late July; reported July 28). The Mayor ordered a further 2.5% from every agency (EV-048).
• LIFT tracker (July 30). A public, interactive tracker lists 100+ city-owned sites for upwards of 50,000 homes. The plan is 5+ requests for proposals (RFPs) a year, building on a March "Neighborhood Builders Fast Track" (EV-193 EV-194).
• FY2026 Mayor's Management Report (September 17). The City's release reported gains; independent coverage highlighted slower emergency response and 311 answer times (EV-049 EV-050 EV-187 EV-188).
• Content-creator network (September reporting). The NYT reported that City Hall has worked with 1,200+ content creators, which raised records-retention questions (EV-140; see Item 5).
• 311 complaint data, Jan–Oct 2026 vs 2025:
  • Street Condition (departure from trend): requests rose 86.3% (114,453 vs 61,451), concentrated in potholes and cave-ins. March 2026 alone had 22,790 pothole requests vs 4,313 in March 2025. Median close time rose to 1.56 days from 1.08 (1.14 in 2024). Jan–Jun requests closed within 7 days fell to 73.8% from 90.6% (87.7% in 2024). The backlog peaks among March–April filings (EV-205 EV-206).
  • Police-handled complaints: median close times were roughly unchanged (noise, illegal parking, blocked driveway) (EV-207).
  • Volumes: Illegal Parking continued its yearly rise (+8.8%) and Blocked Driveway rose 17.0%. Residential noise fell 12.3%, but almost all of that reflects an unusually high January 2025, so it is not presented as a trend (EV-208).
  • Causes, including weather, were not analysed.

Tactics

Reversals / critiques in this phase: Independent readings of the MMR stressed deteriorating emergency response; CBC said NYPD critical-crime response was the highest since FY2013 (EV-050 EV-188).

Evidence IDs: EV-047 EV-048 EV-049 EV-050 EV-140 EV-187 EV-188 EV-193 EV-194 EV-205 EV-206 EV-207 EV-208

Present (rolling; last updated: 2026-11-10)

Summary: On Nov 3, 2026, voters approved all five COGE charter proposals, with roughly 61–72% support:

• streamlining bike-lane approvals
• streamlining outdoor dining
• faster construction starts
• faster contracting
• setting rainy-day fund goals

Good-government groups raised concerns about City advertising during the campaign (EV-127). Implementation timelines for the five changes, and the status of the October heat-inspection rule, are not yet documented.

Tactics

Reversals / critiques in this phase: Good-government groups' concerns about City advertising (above, EV-127); no other new critiques found at cut-off.

Evidence IDs: EV-127

Franchise notes — what transfers

Open questions & gaps

• 311 complaint-level analysis: done for five complaint types (EV-201–EV-208). Not yet examined: causes of the heat backlog and the Street Condition slowdown (staffing, weather, process); whether the October 2026 heat-inspection rule changed outcomes (needs the 2026–27 heating season); other complaint types.
• Pre-publication: re-pull the 311 rows (EV-201–EV-208) using the query links in each row's URL column, because the City revises the data.
• Internal performance routine: any CompStat-style or "stat" meeting cadence, delivery-unit staffing, and the update frequency of the 100-days site.
• EO numbering for the Day-1 housing orders and the Office of Mass Engagement (City EO library).
• Emergency EO 1 & 2: were the 45-day jail and shelter compliance plans delivered?
• EO 12 six-month update (due ~late July 2026): published?
• COGE implementation schedule for the five approved amendments; COGE final report (EV-198; the PDF fetch failed).

Changelog