"After years of watching former Mayor Eric Adams defund and decapitate the Department of Transportation, we were pleasantly surprised by Hizzoner's "down payment" (as Ben Furnas called it) on ramping up staff and funding for the agency. Dave Colon had that story, but we're going to keep his eye on this one as it plays out, as you might have guessed."
"a small agency whose mandate has expanded to include enforcement of the delivery worker minimum pay and other laws regulating the app industry. Instead of an across-the-board budget increase, the agency's "Delivery Worker Protection" unit will expand from spending $570,000 in fiscal year 2026 to $1.023 million in fiscal year 2027 - a 79-percent increase, not a 100-percent increase. Meanwhile the agency will add just nine employees to its headcount."
"Last year, the department testified it would need 20 new employees just to properly regulate app giants - and that budget request didn't even include funding to enforce the delivery worker deactivation bill, which goes into effect in early 2027 and will require another 34 employees to properly enforce, according to the Council's fiscal impact statement. Still, the budget news was good enough for Mamdani to avoid a reset of Streetsblog's Mamdani-O-Meter (right), which is now at 17 days, an administration record."
Mayor Mamdani proposed a city budget that includes a controversial property tax increase and targeted investments to rebuild the Department of Transportation after prior cuts. The proposal provides an initial increase in DOT staff and funding. The Department of Consumer and Worker Protection did not receive a full doubling of its budget; its Delivery Worker Protection unit will grow from $570,000 in FY2026 to $1.023 million in FY2027 and will add nine employees. The department previously said 20 staff were needed to regulate app companies and another 34 will be required to enforce the deactivation law. Sanitation resumed composting ticketing, and reports note service gaps from Uber and Lyft.
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