Early this week, Mayor Zohran Mamdani, speaking at the Urban 20 (U20) Mayors Summit, bemoaned that government “efficiency has been taken on as a right-wing concern,” with Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) being a particularly vile example. As with the phrase “quality of life,” the mayor observed, “there has been a sense that if you admit to an interest in those things, then you are assisting the Right.”

On the contrary, the mayor said: “If you ignore these things,” that’s actually assisting the Right. Government efficiency is “incredibly important,” something “we have to deliver”; he stressed that we can’t let the Right have an “ideological monopoly on it.”

The remarks were consistent with a broader effort in the Mamdani administration, which has a charter commission called the Commission on Government Efficiency (COGE), a cheeky reference to Musk’s DOGE. The charter amendments, which will be on the ballot in November, were crafted with consultation — including ten public hearings all over the city — with city workers, small business owners, and other members of the public; they aim to shore up the city’s rainy day fund (its backup savings in case of a crisis) and to lessen red tape in new construction, city procurements, the use of city properties, improvements to street safety, and many other areas.