Mamdani Held a Press Conference: “The State Can Do It Cheaper and Better Than Private Owners”

Mamdani appointed new leadership of New York City’s Economic Development Corporation

What happened: New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani held a press conference at City Hall where he announced two key appointments to the city’s Economic Development Corporation – EDC.

This is the main structure of the city that manages city land, ports, the ferry, the Hunts Point food center and large development projects. The mayor himself called it the “Swiss Army knife” of City Hall.

Who was appointed:

1. President and CEO of EDC – Tony Shorris
A City Hall veteran with 40 years of experience. Worked under Mayors Koch, Dinkins and de Blasio. Under Koch, he led a 10-year plan to build 180,000 units of affordable housing. Under de Blasio, he was First Deputy Mayor and launched the universal free pre-K and 3K program, and achieved a $15 minimum wage for 50,000 city employees. For the last 8 years he was a partner at consulting firm McKinsey.

Shorris himself said he met Mamdani over breakfast at a diner in April 2025 and was hooked by the idea of combining economic growth and affordability.

2. Chair of the EDC Board of Directors – Lina Khan
Former head of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) under Biden. Known as a tough anti-monopoly fighter, she sued Amazon, Microsoft, Meta. Now – a law professor at Columbia University. She was co-chair of Mamdani’s transition team.

Mamdani called them together “the wonk version of the 1992 Olympic basketball Dream Team.”

What they will do:

The main task the mayor gave them is to make New York affordable. Mamdani repeated the thesis: “if working people cannot afford to live in New York City, New York City itself will not succeed.”

Specifically:

• 5 city-run grocery stores, one in each borough. Mamdani confirmed this is a top priority. So far two are ready.
• Affordable housing. A $100 million affordable housing insurance program has been launched to reduce insurance costs for owners, which have risen by 100%.
• Restructuring EDC. Deputy Mayor for Economic Justice Julie Su said: “Economic growth and economic justice aren’t two separate dials… They’re the same dial.” According to her, EDC should ask who every city dollar is working for.

Shorris said he has no permanent allies or adversaries, only potential partners, and that he will seek common ground with business. Khan added that business in New York is from the bodega to the startup and Fortune 500, and everyone should have access to government.

What else was discussed at the press conference:

The second part moved to other topics.

1. Legionnaires’ outbreak on the Upper East Side.
Mamdani gave a summary: 82 cases, 5 people died, 56 discharged from hospitals, 8 remain in hospitals. 13 people were sick without hospitalization. The disease is not transmitted from person to person, tap water is safe to drink.

City Hall said the source has already been eliminated – all cooling towers in the zone were checked and disinfected. No new symptoms for 10 days. The investigation was started with only 2 cases, although previously it was started with 3.

2. ICC warrant for Netanyahu.
Journalists asked about Mamdani’s promise to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he comes to the UN General Assembly.

Mamdani replied that he asked his team to check all laws, and the conclusion is: the city has no authority to execute warrants of the International Criminal Court. That is the authority of the federal government. He called on the US to join the ICC and execute the warrant.

At the same time, he repeated that he considers both the Hamas attack on October 7 and the actions of Netanyahu’s government in Gaza to be war crimes, and that all ICC warrants must be executed, including warrants for Hamas leaders such as Yahya Sinwar.

Why this is against elementary logic

1. Five stores for 8.5 million people to “lower prices.”

This is the main point of their economic revolution. In a city with 25,000 bodegas, supermarkets, markets and shops, they will open FIVE state stores. One per borough.

Logic: how can five locations lower prices in a city where hundreds of millions of dollars of food are sold per day? They can’t. It’s like trying to cool the ocean with five ice cubes.

At the same time, New York has for DECADES had a huge private network of free food distribution – City Harvest, Food Bank For New York City, hundreds of church soup kitchens, synagogues, mosques. They feed millions, live on donations, without bureaucrats and without a $100 million budget.

Why build a parallel state network? The answer is simple – money. They will allocate a budget, hire directors, consultants from the same McKinsey, make a nice logo “People’s Store”. The sums that are announced for these stores are classic corruption money under a noble pretext. Exactly like the story with “fast buses in 5 minutes” that in reality are 30 minutes late and cost the city billions.

A private store closes if it is unprofitable. A state store will always be unprofitable and will live off taxes.

2. The mayor’s job is potholes, not who is right in Gaza.

The mayor spent the second half of a press conference dedicated to ECONOMICS reasoning about the International Criminal Court, warrants for Netanyahu and Sinwar, and genocide.

What does this have to do with EDC? Nothing.

The job of the Mayor of New York is to make sure that towers with Legionella don’t stink, that asphalt doesn’t collapse, that the subway runs and garbage is collected. Not to give lectures on international law, which, as it turned out, he himself did not understand. First he promised for a year to arrest the Prime Minister of Israel with the NYPD, and now his lawyers explained to him that the city has no right to execute ICC warrants at all, because the US is not even a member of the ICC.

It has become clear to everyone that in this conflict Mamdani is wrong not because he is for the Palestinians, but because he uses the mayor’s tribune for foreign policy instead of dealing with the city. A Palestinian on Staten Island without an arm is a tragedy, but the mayor has 5 people in his city who died from bacteria in cooling towers. That’s what needs to be done.

3. New York should be luxurious, not “affordable”.

Their whole slogan is “economic justice”, “affordability”, “a city that pushes people out.”

This is a substitution of concepts. New York has never been “affordable”. It has been LUXURIOUS. People came here to EARN money, not to get it from City Hall. People worked hard to rent an apartment with a park view, not demanded to have their rent frozen at the expense of the building owner.

Socialists reverse the logic: instead of giving people the opportunity to earn more, they want to forbid others from earning. Instead of “how to make it so you can afford a $4,000 apartment” – they say “let’s force the landlord to rent it for $1,500 and call it justice.”

As a result, the rich will leave for Miami and Texas, business will leave, and those who live off the taxes of those who left will remain. And then the city will become affordable for everyone – because no one will want to live in it.

4. What else they said against common sense:

• “Economic growth and justice is one dial.” No. These are two different dials. Growth is when you build a skyscraper and create 5,000 jobs. Justice in their version is when you then sue the person who built it for earning too much.
• “We will listen to the voices of communities.” Translation: any construction can be blocked by activists shouting at a community board. In a city where one house is approved for 10 years, this means nothing will be built at all.
• “The state can do it cheaper and better than private owners.” An example from Julie Su: the city took the 911 system from private contractors and made it itself. They forgot to add that 911 in New York still glitches, and city projects cost 3 times more and take 5 times longer than private ones. If the city knew how to do it cheaper, we would no longer have potholes in the asphalt.
• Dream Team of antipodes. To appoint at the same time antitrust advocate Lina Khan, who considers Amazon a monopoly, and a McKinsey partner who advises the same Amazon on how to become an even bigger monopoly – this is not a dream team. This is a team where one will write a report on how to regulate business, and the second will take money to explain to business how to bypass that regulation.

The bottom line is simple: they want to run a billionaire city like a charity canteen. And New York is not a canteen. It is the most expensive restaurant in the world. And people come here not for free soup, but for the opportunity to pay the bill themselves.