Mayor Zohran Mamdani's team will skip an oversight hearing on New York City's chaotic pied-à-terre tax rollout, citing a lawsuit his own administration's mistakes invited.
Instead of sending officials to answer questions under oath at Tuesday's 1 p.m. City Council hearing, the Mamdani administration said it would submit written testimony, a move that drew swift, bipartisan condemnation from council members who called it evasive and disrespectful to the public. The New York Post reported the decision late Sunday, hours before dueling rallies were set to converge on City Hall steps.
Mamdani spokesman Matthew Rauschenbach framed the no-show as a legal precaution:
"Given the ongoing litigation, our administration has decided to submit written testimony to the City Council tomorrow for its hearing on the pied-à-terre surcharge."
The "ongoing litigation" is a lawsuit filed by three homeowners who say the city wrongly tagged their primary residences for a tax that was never supposed to apply to them. In other words, the administration is using a lawsuit born from its own rollout failures as a shield against answering for those failures.
The pied-à-terre tax, approved by Governor Kathy Hochul and Democratic state lawmakers at Mamdani's urging, targets one- to three-family homes valued at $5 million or more and co-ops and condominiums worth at least $1 million that serve as non-primary, unoccupied residences. The idea was to squeeze revenue out of wealthy absentee owners. The execution was something else entirely.
City officials published a database listing more than 900,000 homeowners in connection with the tax. That figure alone should have raised alarms. New York City does not have 900,000 pied-à-terre owners. The sprawling list swept up primary homeowners, ordinary residents who had no conceivable liability under the statute.
Then came 17,000 individual notices warning homeowners they would be subject to the tax unless they filed for an exemption. For families who have lived in the same house for years, receiving an official letter threatening a new tax bill on a home they never left was not a minor inconvenience. It was a demand that they prove their own innocence to a bureaucracy that could not keep its records straight.
Three homeowners filed suit, contending they were either wrongly sent notices for longtime primary residences or found themselves on the published tax roll without cause. Among the plaintiffs: the wife and father of Republican Staten Island Councilman Frank Morano. A judge temporarily paused the rollout last week, but that pause was itself paused days later, letting City Hall resume the process.
What made Sunday's announcement notable was not just the Republican opposition. Council members from Mamdani's own political coalition turned on the decision with unusual speed.
Bronx Councilman Eric Dinowitz, described as otherwise allied with the mayor, posted on X:
"The pied-a-terre tax is an important ingredient in funding critical city services, but its rollout was clearly flawed. By refusing to show up, the administration is turning its back on the transparency and accountability our city was promised."
Fellow Bronx Democrat Kevin Riley struck a similar note. He wrote on X that written testimony "cannot replace direct engagement, transparency, and the Council's ability to ask important questions on behalf of New Yorkers."
City Council Speaker Julie Menin went further, pointing out that previous mayoral administrations testified at oversight hearings even when lawsuits were pending, a direct rebuttal to Rauschenbach's rationale. Menin called the decision "unfortunate" but confirmed the hearing would proceed so the public could be heard.
The criticism from Democrats matters because it strips away the administration's preferred framing. Mamdani's team wants this to look like a legal judgment call. His own allies are treating it as a transparency failure, and they support the underlying tax. When even the people who agree with your policy goal say you are ducking accountability, the litigation excuse starts to look thin.
Councilman Morano, whose family members are plaintiffs in the lawsuit, did not hold back. He posted on X:
"New Yorkers have been confused, alarmed and forced to spend their own time dealing with this rollout. The Council scheduled a public hearing so the administration could answer questions directly. Now they won't even show up."
Morano called the move "incredibly disrespectful" to the public. His frustration reflects a straightforward point: homeowners who received erroneous notices had to spend their own time and, in some cases, their own money sorting out a problem the city created. The least the administration could do is sit in a chair and explain how it happened.
The political fallout from the hearing dodge adds to a pattern of friction between Mamdani and the public he governs. The mayor has already faced sharp backlash on other fronts, he was booed off stage at an NYPD event on Staten Island earlier this month, and community leaders have demanded he stop stoking division in the city.
Before the hearing begins, two opposing groups plan to rally on the City Hall steps at noon Tuesday. Republican council members organized a demonstration against the tax rollout, aiming to channel the frustration of homeowners caught up in the administration's errors. On the other side, supporters from the Democratic Socialists of America plan a rival assembly in defense of the levy.
Rauschenbach, in a second statement, insisted the tax remains vital. He said the pied-à-terre surcharge is "an important source of revenue" that funds "safer streets, cleaner parks and other critical investments that New Yorkers across all five boroughs deserve." That may be true in theory. But revenue projections mean little when the rollout has alienated the very residents it was not supposed to touch.
The administration's position boils down to this: trust us, read our written testimony, and do not ask follow-up questions. That is not how oversight works. Written testimony is a one-way document. It cannot be cross-examined. It cannot be pressed for specifics. It cannot be forced to reconcile a 900,000-name database with a tax that targets a narrow slice of high-value, non-primary properties.
Speaker Menin was right to note the precedent. Past administrations, facing lawsuits on issues from policing to housing, still sent officials to testify. Litigation did not excuse them from the basic obligation of answering to elected representatives. Mamdani's team has offered no explanation for why this case is different, beyond the fact that the questions would be uncomfortable.
An administration that promised accountability now refuses to sit for it. That tells New Yorkers everything the written testimony will leave out.