Politics & Government

Politics & Government in New York

The Council, the Mayor, the Governor, the budget fights, and the agencies that run your day. This is the straight-government desk that anchors The Front Page, so it leads with the cleanest account of what happened, before anyone spins it.

Desks we analyze here: THE CITY, NYT Metro, City & State NY, Spectrum News NY1.

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Explainer How a bill becomes a law in Albany The rent laws, the MTA's money, your bail law: all of it moves through one Albany pipeline. The Constitution wrote the rules, including the loophole. Explainer Who actually runs New York City One charter, five kinds of elected official, and a lot of confusion about who does what. The document itself is blunter than any civics class. Explainer How ranked-choice voting works in NYC You get five rankings, the count runs in rounds, and the runoff election is gone. The Charter amendment voters approved in 2019, explained from the text. Explainer How the NYC budget actually works Bigger than most states' budgets, adopted on a calendar the Charter wrote down to the day. Here is the machine behind every June handshake at City Hall. Explainer How a bill becomes a law in New York City The City Council passes hundreds of local laws a term, and the rules for every one of them sit in the Charter: one subject, seven days on the desk, and a mayor who can be overruled. Explainer How New York City Council districts are drawn After every census an appointed commission redraws all fifty-one Council districts under a strict, ranked set of rules, and it happens with far less attention than it deserves. Explainer What a community board does, and what it doesn't decide Fifty unpaid neighbors per district, appointed by the borough president, with a public hearing on everything and a veto over nothing. Here is what the Charter actually gives them. Explainer What the Public Advocate actually does First in line for the mayoralty, a voice in the Council without a vote, a complaint office with no agency to run. The strangest job in city government, straight from the Charter that built it. Explainer What a borough president actually controls Five of them, one per borough: every community board seat in their gift, a formal opinion in every land-use fight, a planning office, and the borough's loudest microphone. What the Charter actually hands the job. Explainer How 311 actually works, and what it can get done Over 500 kinds of service request, one number, and a paper trail the city has to answer to. What actually happens between your noise complaint and an inspector on the block. Explainer What the comptroller actually does Auditor of every agency on a four-year clock, registrar of every city contract, fiduciary of the pension billions, and second in line for the mayoralty. The office that reads the city's books, from the Charter out. Explainer Why New York City has five boroughs On January 1, 1898, five separate places became one city. Brooklyn, then the fourth-largest city in the country, voted itself out of existence by 277 votes, and the government that merger created is still the one that runs New York.

Politics & Government, explained

The questions New Yorkers actually ask.

Who actually runs New York, the city or the state?

Both, and the split is the whole story. The Mayor and the 51-member City Council run City Hall: the NYPD, the schools, sanitation, the city budget. But Albany, meaning the Governor and the Legislature, controls the things that decide daily life here: the MTA’s money, rent law, and a big share of school funding. So a New York story is almost never just a city story.

What does the Mayor control versus the Governor, for my day-to-day?

The Mayor runs the agencies you actually touch: police, sanitation, the public schools, housing inspections. The Governor and the state Legislature set the rules the city has to live under: transit funding, rent regulation, criminal-justice law, and the state budget the city leans on. When the two fight, you feel it in your commute and your rent.

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