You have three minutes to tell New York City how to fix itself, and the next two chances are this week. Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s Commission on Government Efficiency, the COGE, is holding its next two in-person hearings: Queens on Monday, June 22, and Staten Island on Tuesday, June 23, both 5 to 8 p.m. A second round of borough hearings runs into July, but these two are the next ones on the calendar. Whatever this panel recommends could land on your ballot on November 3, where every voter in the city will say yes or no to a rewrite of the document that decides who in city government actually has power.
COGE is one letter off from DOGE, Elon Musk’s federal Department of Government Efficiency, and that is not an accident. When a reporter asked Mamdani what he admired about DOGE, he said, per Reason, that it was “just the name and what it should have been,” then went after Musk for using the word efficiency as cover to “cut as many jobs that were as critical as possible for so many of the neediest people.” The numbers back him up. DOGE promised $2 trillion in federal cuts and, by its own estimation after 10 months, had saved about $215 billion, also per Reason. Mamdani’s pitch is that his version does the opposite: a fact-finding panel meant to make government work faster, not deliver less.
COGE is a Charter Revision Commission, a body that can propose changes to the New York City Charter, the rulebook that defines how the government is structured and who holds which powers. Mamdani created it on May 28 and put Patrick Gaspard in the chair, the former U.S. ambassador to South Africa and onetime executive director of the Democratic National Committee, according to THE CITY and CBS New York. Gaspard sits over a panel of about 15 members, including labor figure Henry Garrido, former Manhattan Borough President Ruth Messinger, City Council Member Carlina Rivera, and Partnership for New York City head Kathryn Wylde. The marching orders, per CBS, are to strip out “outdated bureaucratic barriers” that slow infrastructure and services, hand agencies more authority and flexibility, and fix budget practices.
To stand this commission up, Mamdani first killed someone else’s. Eric Adams appointed a Charter Revision Commission on December 31, 2025, his final day in office, and that panel’s top priority was a ballot question to create open primaries and nonpartisan elections in the city, as amNewYork reported. Mamdani voided the whole thing with a one-page notice dated May 27, invoking the state Municipal Home Rule Law and a state budget provision, championed by the mayor himself, that let him terminate his predecessor’s commission. We broke down that two-commissions collision, and why one of them was already legally dead, here.
The open-primaries question Adams’s panel teed up is exactly the question Mamdani’s new panel can choose to leave off the ballot, and at the first COGE hearing it would not die quietly. More than 100 people showed up to that June 9 session at New York Law School, and per City and State, open primaries dominated the testimony, with around a dozen people arguing the city should let any voter, of any party, vote in a single primary. Fabien Levy, a former deputy mayor under Adams, testified that “if you examine why our elections, especially our primaries, have such low voter turnout, it is because our system is rigged to turn voters away.” City Council Member Gale Brewer also stepped up, backing a push to streamline the Department of Design and Construction.
So when COGE says it wants your input, this is the live argument you are walking into. People are using their three minutes to fight for open primaries, for faster outdoor-dining permits, for cleaner procurement rules, for a stronger city ethics watchdog. Tech advocates at BetaNYC used their slot to argue for “digital sovereignty,” the idea that the city should own its software instead of renting it from vendors, writing that “every licensing fee paid for external software is a dollar diverted from more critical services,” per their published testimony. The charter is not abstract. It decides whether the agency that fixes your street can move faster, whether you get to vote in a primary you are currently locked out of, and how the city spends money it could be spending on you.
The format is the same at both hearings. Any member of the public can testify for up to three minutes, in person or on Zoom. COGE takes in-person testimony first and Zoom testimony after, so if you are dialing in, expect to speak later in the evening. Organizations have to pick one representative. If the clock runs out before your turn, the commission asks you to come to a later session or submit written testimony instead. American Sign Language and Spanish interpretation are provided at every session, in person and online; accessibility or language requests should go in at least 48 hours ahead by emailing [email protected] or calling 212-788-0014.
The Queens hearing is Monday, June 22 at the city Department of Design and Construction’s first-floor multipurpose room, 30-30 Thomson Avenue in Long Island City (enter via 30th Place). The Staten Island session is Tuesday, June 23 at Staten Island University Hospital North, 475 Seaview Avenue (enter via the Dr. Regina McGinn Education Center). The commission has a second round of borough hearings on its calendar through mid-July, but once that testimony phase wraps, COGE moves on to writing its proposals, and the next time most New Yorkers touch this is in a voting booth in November, when the choices are already locked.
If you cannot make either room, you are not shut out. The Zoom links for both sessions are posted at www.nyc.gov/charter, where you can also confirm times and addresses. Written testimony goes to tinyurl.com/COGE2026comments or by emailing [email protected]. Three minutes, or a few sentences in an email, is the cheapest leverage you will get over how this city runs all year. Spend it while the commission is still listening.
Featured image: NYC Mayor’s Office / CC BY 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
