Five days into his mayoralty, Zohran Mamdani signed two executive orders targeting deceptive business practices like junk fees or making it difficult to cancel a gym membership in an effort to make the city more affordable.
“It is hard enough to live in New York City without having to worry all the time about whether you’re being ripped off,” Mr. Mamdani said on Monday at a news conference at an outdoor gym in Long Island City, Queens. “Our affordability agenda is also about an agenda of dignity, and there are few things more undignified than feeling taken advantage of by someone you are already paying.”
Protecting consumers, including renters, appears be a large part of Mr. Mamdani’s early agenda as mayor. The actions of Mr. Mamdani, a democratic socialist, appear so far to indicate a willingness to govern based on a leftist political agenda.
Lina Khan, the co-chairwoman of Mr. Mamdani’s transition team and the chairwoman of the Federal Trade Commission under former President Joseph R. Biden Jr., recently led a committee that drew up more than a dozen executive actions Mr. Mamdani could take as mayor that would lower costs and protect workers and consumers.
Last week, Mr. Mamdani announced that a member of his inner circle would head the Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants and that the city would intervene on behalf of tens of thousands of tenants in the bankruptcy case of a large landlord who put more than 5,000 apartments subject to rent regulation up for auction. On Saturday, the mayor signed an executive order that directed the city to hold so-called “rental rip-off” hearings in the first 100 days of his administration where tenants could testify about poor living conditions.
“It’s terrific to see Mayor Mamdani get right to work challenging abusive practices that make everyday life even more expensive,” Ms. Khan said.
Mr. Mamdani’s candidacy faced significant pushback from leaders in the business community who were worried by his call to raise taxes on corporations and the wealthy. They donated millions of dollars to super PACs working to defeat him. After he won the Democratic primary in June, Mr. Mamdani met with many of them in meetings with the Partnership for New York City, a business advocacy group.
“To the extent that the Mamdani plan is to include employers in the conversation about enhancing consumer and employee protections, I think it can be a successful effort,” said Kathryn S. Wylde, the longtime president of the Partnership for New York City. “But it’s important that the mayor affirm that this is not adversarial toward employers, but will be a part of his effort to build a broad coalition.”
The orders signed on Monday created a task force on junk fees and directed the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection to crack down on them as well as deceptive business practices.
Samuel Levine, the commissioner of the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, said that some of the world’s largest corporations, online retailers, ticket sellers and even food delivery companies operating in the city have “padded their profits” by making it difficult to cancel subscriptions and imposing hidden fees. He warned companies that he planned to put a stop to those practices.
“Don’t wait for a subpoena,” said Mr. Levine, who served as director of the trade commission’s consumer protection bureau under Ms. Khan. “Do right by your customers today.”
In June, Letitia James, the attorney general, announced a $600,000 settlement with Equinox Group over the difficulty of ending a membership. Last month, she joined a multistate coalition that filed suit against Uber regarding the difficulty of canceling subscriptions.
Before the state recently updated its business laws, Ms. James said her office was finding it difficult to get judgments for abusive and deceptive business actions, but she sees the focus on the issue by Mr. Mamdani as part of a “multilevel government offense in response to the needs of working families.”
Mr. Mamdani’s affordability platform was enormously popular. He pledged to freeze the rent on one million eligible apartments, make city buses fast and free, implement a system of universal child care and create five city-run grocery stores across the city to help mitigate the cost of healthy food.
As a candidate, Mr. Mamdani also criticized the decision by soccer’s international governing body to determine the cost of tickets to the World Cup based on demand. He wanted World Cup officials to instead offer 15 percent of tickets at a discounted rate.
While campaigning, Mr. Mamdani spoke to New York Knicks fans near Madison Square Garden about whether they could afford tickets to the games. And after former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo appeared courtside at a Knicks game with former Mayor Eric Adams, Mr. Mamdani bought nosebleed tickets and mingled with fans in the arena’s upper levels.
Jeffery C. Mays is a Times reporter covering politics with a focus on New York City Hall.
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