City’s Democrats Sour on Mamdani Amid ‘Disastrous’ Pied-à-Terre Tax Rollout

The mayor may soon find himself called into an oversight hearing following the botched rollout of the pied-à-terre tax that had city officials — including vocal Democrats from the mayor’s own party — calling for answers on behalf of their panicked constituents.Democrats were among the first to call out the messy, high-profile launch of New York’s new surcharge on second homes, which was advertised as a tax on luxury properties worth $5 million and above that sit unoccupied for most of the year. In reality, the policy will penalize property owners with condos or co-ops valued at $1 million or more. Democrat councilmember Kamillah Hanks called the introduction of the pied-à-terre tax “disastrous” and “a little bit shocking” in a statement to Bloomberg News after hundreds of thousands of Staten Island residents found their names and addresses listed on a property roll attached to the city’s new pied-à-terre tax webpage, a move she deemed “incompetent.”On the Upper West Side, Democrat councilmember Gale Brewer has spent the week fielding the fallout from the Department of Finance’s guilty-until-proven-innocent approach to the tax. The city has sent almost 17,000 letters putting property owners on notice for potential fees running to five figures. In some cases requiring run-of-the-mill New Yorkers to prove they aren’t jetsetters passing through. “I have full-time residents calling me,” she told the City Reporter. “They have to fill out paperwork and call lawyers and pay them to get help with old documents.”Ms. Brewer and Ms. Hanks’ colleague, councilmember Frank Morano took things a step farther after his office was “flooded with calls from homeowners.”“Whatever you think about the new pied-à-terre tax, government has a responsibility to get the facts right before putting people through that,” Mr. Morano, a Republican, wrote in a Facebook post Wednesday announcing his call for an oversight hearing.“I asked the Comptroller to audit the rollout and determine whether this could have been handled more efficiently and at less cost to taxpayers,” he said. Comptroller Mark Levine as well as Hanks and Morano’s offices did not immediately respond to inquiries from The New York Sun on Friday.The mayor eventually addressed confusion over the property roll at a press conference, explaining that it was a republished list of every residential address in the city, but taking no responsibility for the confusion created by a label stating: “This roll includes, but is not limited to, those properties that may be subject to the surcharge.” The state law introducing the pied-à-terre tax required the list to be available for public inspection, though the list is already posted annually to little fanfare.Ms. Brewer and Ms. Hanks are not the only Democrats the mayor has angered in recent weeks. Councilmember Oswald Feliz lamented last week that plans to renovate the bus lane on Fordham Road, the busiest commercial thoroughfare in the Bronx, did not reflect the community’s needs.“It is disappointing that, rather than making meaningful investments (in a historically-neglected minority community), the administration has chosen to offer crumbs,” said Feliz. Another Bronx progressive, borough president Vanessa Gibson endorsed his position in a statement to Politico. “I am frustrated and I do share many of the sentiments shared by Oswald,” she said.The same week, Queens Borough President Donovan Richards Jr. posted text from a New York Times column that explored Black and Latino community leaders’ concern over Democratic Socialists of America candidate’s victories in gentrifying New York neighborhoods. According to the article, while Mr. Mamdani’s party regularly fields minority candidates, its membership remains 85% white and highly college-educated, leading locals to worry their new representatives won’t register their concerns.“White supremacy comes in all forms,” Mr. Richards wrote, later sharing a Malcolm X quote comparing white conservatives to “wolves” and white liberals to “foxes, who also show their teeth…but pretend that they are smiling.”

City’s Democrats Sour on Mamdani Amid ‘Disastrous’ Pied-à-Terre Tax Rollout

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