The Manhattan Institute sued the administration of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani in New York State Supreme Court on Sept. 14 and asked the court to force City Hall to release documents that the think tank said it sought under the state’s Freedom of Information Law.
The lawsuit stems from requests in which two staff members at the think tank sought information about an attempt by Ana María Archila, commissioner of the Mayor’s Office for International Affairs, to schedule a meeting with the Iranian envoy to the United Nations. The meeting was scrapped after pressure from the U.S. State Department.
Santiago Vidal Calvo, a cities policy analyst at the think tank, and a colleague allege that they asked the mayor’s office for calendar and other documents under the state FOIL law on July 9.
The two say the city told them it would respond six months later, in January 2027. The state law requires public agencies to reply within 20 working days.
“The mayor’s office tries to appear transparent. They started a crusade of transparency, but it is hard to keep tabs on what they are doing in practice,” Vidal Calvo told JNS.
During his mayoral campaign, Mamdani promised government transparency. He created a Commission on Government Efficiency, which held public hearings in each of New York’s five boroughs. He also released a trove of documents about Sept. 11 shortly before the 25th anniversary of the terror attack.
“People fall for the theatrics of it,” Vidal Castro told JNS. “On the most basic law, they’re being overly secretive about it. If the mayor’s office wanted to, it could expand the FOIL office to be the most responsive in the nation.”
“It looks bad from the public’s perspective that City Hall has a policy like this,” he said.
The FOIL request he and his colleague submitted should have been easy for City Hall to fulfill, since it asked for scheduled appointments during a defined period for a single official, according to Vidal Castro.
His and his colleague’s lawsuit is the latest of several similar attempts to force City Hall to release information about issues of concern to Jewish New Yorkers under state law.
In June, Randy Mastro, a former first deputy New York City mayor, and veteran investigative journalist Richard Behar sued Mamdani for what they say is his administration’s failure to turn over records about his rollback on his first day on the job of several of his predecessor’s executive orders on Jew-hatred and Israel.
That case is ongoing, and Mastro told JNS last month that Mamdani’s administration is “a government more reminiscent of what you would find behind the old Iron Curtain.”
On Feb. 19, the attorney Jack Lester sued Mamdani to turn over records about reversing policies on Jew-hatred of former Mayor Eric Adams. Lester had filed a FOIL request on Jan. 12 for that information on behalf of five New York City Council members and 29 other New Yorkers.
After initially telling Lester it needed 90 days to respond, City Hall repeatedly extended that timeframe. It responded seven months later and said that all of the information it had was privileged and confidential, Lester told JNS this week.
The mayor’s office has filed multiple motions to have the lawsuit dismissed, according to Lester.
“It makes a mockery of open government, at least when it comes to the administration’s relationship with the Jewish community,” he told JNS. “Suddenly this is the most non-transparent administration in the history of city government.”
The mayor’s press office told JNS, of the Manhattan Institute lawsuit, that “our law department is reviewing this lawsuit, and we are fully committed to transparency.”
“We’re working to return FOIL requests in full accordance with the law,” the office told JNS.
Mamdani’s office has said previously that it was trying to respond to what it said was a backlog of more than 1,500 FOIL requests left over from the prior administration.
Lester, who said that his lawsuit is being combined with Behar’s, told JNS that the implications of the suits are “huge,” because other elected democratic socialists could take similar action nationwide.
Mamdani is “trailblazing an antisemitic precedent,” Lester told JNS.
