New York City Mayor Mamdani cuts red tape, but needs to hold government accountable

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s new OPEN for Small Business initiative cuts more than 50 outdated rules for small businesses. The mayor’s efforts are the needed, practical, unglamorous work far too easy for city government to put off. With Mamdani’s moves, a bodega no longer needs a separate license to sell fruit on the sidewalk when it already holds one to sell fruit inside. A restaurant no longer needs a second, decades-old dairy permit just to serve ice cream. 

It’s a real, useful audit, built on a simple standard: If a rule isn’t actually protecting anyone or preventing a real problem, it shouldn’t survive just because it’s always been on the books. 

Mayor Mamdani’s new Click-to-Cancel and junk-fee rules require businesses to let customers cancel a subscription as easily as they signed up, and to disclose the full price of a hotel room or service upfront rather than adding hidden charges at checkout. Both rules carry civil penalties beginning at $525 per violation. This is smarter government: Set the standard, back it with a real cost if the government misses its deadline, and companies tend to fall in line. 

The common thread in Mamdani’s initiative is accountability. When City Hall decides a rule matters, it expects businesses to comply and backs that expectation with real consequences. The city should hold itself to the same standard. Unfortunately, that same logic hasn’t made its way into the city’s housing permitting process yet, where delays routinely stretch on for years. 

Many housing developments in New York spend years navigating the city’s permitting and approval process. Projects that need a rezoning or another discretionary approval can take roughly three years before construction even begins. 

Every extra month in review adds financing costs, consultant fees, and other expenses before a single home is built. A recent study of Los Angeles, a large market that shares New York’s mix of high housing costs and heavy permitting delays, put a number to that dynamic, estimating that permitting accounts for roughly one-third of the gap between home prices and construction costs there. 

A few states have already gone further than setting a goal for these types of reforms. Pennsylvania’s PAyback program requires state agencies to publish a firm review timeline for each permit type and refunds the applicant’s fee in full if the agency misses its own deadline. Reporting this year credits it with cutting backlogs and shortening approval times statewide. 

Washington state passed a version this March requiring local governments to refund 10% to 20% of a permit fee depending on how badly a deadline was missed. 

Florida’s law, in effect since January 2025, applies automatic fee reductions for every day a deadline is missed. 

Michigan has had a comparable directive since 2023, requiring agencies to establish permit timelines and, where legally permitted, waive or refund fees when those timelines are missed.

New York hasn’t tried anything like it yet. Mamdani’s own SPEED reforms are headed in the right direction. They have already set faster goals for permitting, cutting the pre-certification timeline for many zoning actions from about two years to six months, but a goal isn’t the same as a consequence, and agencies still face nothing if they miss it. 

To have the impact the mayor says he wants, a well-designed permitting standard needs to account for a real risk that researchers studying similar policies have flagged. A deadline only changes behavior if there are consequences for missing it, and a poorly designed one can backfire. If the government missing a deadline meant automatic approval for a project, an agency facing a complicated application might simply deny it rather than risk losing control of a project it hasn’t finished reviewing. A fee refund sidesteps that problem, since it costs the agency money without forcing approval of a project that may genuinely need more scrutiny. 

This fix doesn’t require new staff, new software, or another task force. City Hall would simply have to apply the same standard to itself that it recently applied to every small business owner in New York. Publish the timeline, and if it’s missed, issue a full refund instead of an apology.

Mayor Mamdani has already shown he’s comfortable attaching a price tag to a missed standard when the target is a private company. Applying that same logic to the agencies responsible for housing permits is the natural next step. It should also be relatively simple politically for the mayor because it doesn’t require Albany or the City Council. 

If City Hall expects accountability from businesses, it should be willing to demand the same from itself. A faster, more predictable permitting process won’t solve New York’s housing shortage on its own, but it would make building homes less expensive and less uncertain, and that’s exactly the kind of practical reform Mamdani’s OPEN for Small Business was meant to implement.

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Source: https://reason.org/commentary/new-york-city-mayor-mamdani-cuts-red-tape-but-needs-to-hold-government-accountable/