Steven Banks was nominated by NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani as corporation counsel, the city’s top legal office. A lifelong Legal Aid Society lawyer, Banks has previously sued City Hall over homeless rights, and has run the city’s massive social services agency.. This hire signals Mamdani’s intent to put municipal lawyering at the forefront for affordability, immigrant protections, and frontline rights fights amid federal tensions.
New York City’s corporation counsel serves as the city’s chief legal officer, heading a 1,100-lawyer department that handles all litigation involving city agencies, from defending the NYPD in police misconduct suits to prosecuting building code violations and negotiating multimillion-dollar contracts. The office sets the strategy for high-stakes cases like right-to-shelter enforcement, tenant protections, labor disputes, and in federal clashes over immigration or sanctuary policies, while advising the mayor on legal risks of bold policies like rent freezes or expanded protest rights.
Mamdani has pledged 200 more hires to the department to restore it to a “frontlines” force for equal rights rather than a defensive shop. Paired with immigrant rights litigator Ramzi Kassem as chief counsel, Banks will shape litigation on policing, evictions, immigration, and Mamdani’s “affordability agenda”—drawing on 44 years of representing clients “harmed by city actions.” Council confirmation looms, but Mamdani cited Banks’s Legal Aid management scale as proof he can use the office as a tool for “transformative change.”
Banks spent over three decades at the Legal Aid Society, rising to the position of attorney-in-chief, managing 1,900 lawyers who handled 300,000 cases annually. He played a key role in the landmark 1983 McCain v. Koch settlement, establishing New York City’s permanent right-to-shelter mandate for homeless families, reshaping urban policy nationwide. Banks also sued multiple NYC mayors— Koch, Giuliani, and Bloomberg— over shelter squalor, benefits denials, and family separations, building a reputation as a fierce advocate for the city’s most marginalized.
As commissioner of the Department of Social Services under former Mayor Bill de Blasio in 2014, Banks oversaw a $12 billion agency with 16,000 staff serving 3 million New Yorkers, later merging with homeless services to tackle a shelter census that had ballooned to 115% under Mayor Bloomberg. He cut family shelter stays by 35% through rental vouchers, public housing prioritization, right to counsel for low-income tenants, slashing evictions by 41%, and Rikers video monitoring reforms—though critics noted persistent crises such as cluster-site squalor and record shelter populations. In 2021, he left for pro bono work at the law firm Paul Weiss, Banks and sued the city under Mayor Eric Adams, opposing migrant shelter time limits in the Callahan litigation and preserving core right-to-shelter protections.
Since the pandemic, NYC’s Law Department has shrunk from 1,500 attorneys pre-2020 to 1,385 by early 2025, slashing case capacity by 22%, surging state court backlogs to 45% and stalling 2,893 high-value contracts amid paralegal and clerical losses. This forced a defensive crouch under Adams, prioritizing survival over rights-offensives like tenant suits or NYPD reforms, rippling delays into child welfare, code enforcement, and wage-theft prosecutions. Mamdani has tasked Banks with restoring “frontline” muscle for affordability fights, shelter enforcement, and Trump-era sanctuary battles, flipping the office from hollowed risk-manager to equity enforcer amid pending Council confirmation and tight budgets.
Why it matters
Banks’s vantage positions him to humanize the impacts of policy in court, potentially declining to defend abusive practices such as NYPD stops, tenant harassment, or migrant removals. In a second Trump term, with Mamdani vowing “municipal socialism,” this duo signals that NYC will litigate aggressively against the clamping down of sanctuary expansions, protest rights, and federal overreach, flipping the Law Department from risk-avoider to rights-enforcer. For everyday New Yorkers, it means a city lawyer attuned to shelter beds, eviction courts, and benefits cliffs, testing whether insider reform can deliver amid housing shortages and federal hostility.
A CUNY Law professor and CLEAR clinic founder, Ramzi Kassem, was appointed chief counsel to NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani on December 30, 2025. Kassem now advises City Hall on its legal strategy amid Mamdani’s “affordability agenda” and federal clashes. The position is appointed by the mayor without City Council confirmation, allowing immediate effect, unlike Banks’ nomination of the corporation counsel, which requires Council approval. On appointment, Mayor Mamdani cited Kassem’s “remarkable experience”, positioning him to “defend those too often abandoned by our legal system” and enable “transformative change” for working-class New Yorkers.
Kassem joined CUNY School of Law in 2009 as the founding director of CLEAR (Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility), challenging FBI/ICE surveillance of Muslims post-9/11 through suits like Raza v. NYC that secured historic NYPD limits, and Guantánamo habeas petitions for 15 detainees, ultimately freeing 12 of them. He co-directed the Immigrant & Non-Citizen Rights Clinic for over a decade, litigating asylum, watchlist abuses, including Tanzin v. Tanvir, and wartime detention before federal courts, military commissions, and tribunals. Kassem represented Guantánamo detainee Ahmed Muhammed Haza al-Darbi, charged with al Qaeda links and released in 2018 after a plea deal, Columbia University protester Mahmoud Khalil in disciplinary proceedings related to anti-Israel encampments, and, through CLEAR, provided legal support to Muslim and immigrant clients facing law enforcement scrutiny.
From 2022 to 2024, Kassem served as Senior Policy Advisor for Immigration on Biden’s Domestic Policy Council, collaborating on National Security Council intelligence and transborder issues. He advised Mamdani’s legal transition team, framing his role as defending civil rights against “federal authoritarianism,” per announcement remarks.
Why it matters
As chief counsel (under corporate counsel Steve Banks), Kassem will shape Mamdani’s legal firewall against federal immigration raids, NYPD reforms, tenant protections, and protest rights, positioning NYC for sanctuary expansions amid Trump policies. His track record suggests aggressive accountability (e.g., surveillance curbs).
Banks spent over three decades at the Legal Aid Society, rising to the position of attorney-in-chief, managing 1,900 lawyers who handled 300,000 cases annually. He played a key role in the landmark 1983 McCain v. Koch settlement, establishing New York City’s permanent right-to-shelter mandate for homeless families, reshaping urban policy nationwide. Banks also sued multiple NYC mayors— Koch, Giuliani, and Bloomberg— over shelter squalor, benefits denials, and family separations, building a reputation as a fierce advocate for the city’s most marginalized.
As commissioner of the Department of Social Services under former Mayor Bill de Blasio in 2014, Banks oversaw a $12 billion agency with 16,000 staff serving 3 million New Yorkers, later merging with homeless services to tackle a shelter census that had ballooned to 115% under Mayor Bloomberg. He cut family shelter stays by 35% through rental vouchers, public housing prioritization, right to counsel for low-income tenants, slashing evictions by 41%, and Rikers video monitoring reforms—though critics noted persistent crises such as cluster-site squalor and record shelter populations. In 2021, he left for pro bono work at the law firm Paul Weiss, Banks and sued the city under Mayor Eric Adams, opposing migrant shelter time limits in the Callahan litigation and preserving core right-to-shelter protections.
Since the pandemic, NYC’s Law Department has shrunk from 1,500 attorneys pre-2020 to 1,385 by early 2025, slashing case capacity by 22%, surging state court backlogs to 45% and stalling 2,893 high-value contracts amid paralegal and clerical losses. This forced a defensive crouch under Adams, prioritizing survival over rights-offensives like tenant suits or NYPD reforms, rippling delays into child welfare, code enforcement, and wage-theft prosecutions. Mamdani has tasked Banks with restoring “frontline” muscle for affordability fights, shelter enforcement, and Trump-era sanctuary battles, flipping the office from hollowed risk-manager to equity enforcer amid pending Council confirmation and tight budgets.
Why it matters
Banks’s vantage positions him to humanize the impacts of policy in court, potentially declining to defend abusive practices such as NYPD stops, tenant harassment, or migrant removals. In a second Trump term, with Mamdani vowing “municipal socialism,” this duo signals that NYC will litigate aggressively against the clamping down of sanctuary expansions, protest rights, and federal overreach, flipping the Law Department from risk-avoider to rights-enforcer. For everyday New Yorkers, it means a city lawyer attuned to shelter beds, eviction courts, and benefits cliffs, testing whether insider reform can deliver amid housing shortages and federal hostility.
The New York City Comptroller is one of the most powerful independently elected officials in city government, responsible for auditing city agencies, overseeing municipal contracts, and managing the city’s pension funds. The office acts as a watchdog over City Hall finances and plays a central role in ensuring transparency and accountability in public money spending.
For Zohran Mamdani, whose campaign focused on affordability, housing stability, and expanded public services, the comptroller’s role will be critical. Many of his campaign promises depend on fiscal oversight, contract enforcement, and long-term financial planning.Beyond audits, the comptroller influences how city agencies interact with both private vendors and nonprofits. This authority matters as the incoming administration seeks to rebalance spending priorities and reduce waste.
With the office opening alongside a new mayoral term, the next comptroller will shape how Mamdani’s agenda is financed and monitored during a period of fiscal pressure and political transition.
New York City’s deputy mayors oversee clusters of agencies touching nearly every aspect of daily life. While the mayor sets priorities, deputy mayors translate those priorities into operations across housing, public safety, economic development, and health.
These roles are often where campaign ideas encounter bureaucratic reality. Deputy mayors coordinate agencies with competing mandates and manage crises that define an administration’s public image.
Appointments to these posts often signal how a mayor intends to govern—whether emphasizing reform, continuity, or technocratic management.
Mamdani’s selections will offer early clues about how aggressively he plans to pursue structural change inside City Hall.
One of the more influential positions in the deputy system is the one overseeing Public Safety. This person serves as the mayor’s top coordinator on issues related to crime, emergency response, and public safety policy. The role is not independently elected and has no fixed job description in law; instead, its authority and scope are defined by the mayor in office.
In practice, the deputy mayor oversees and coordinates multiple agencies involved in public safety, including the NYPD, FDNY, Department of Correction, Department of Probation, NYC Emergency Management, and criminal justice offices at City Hall. While agency commissioners retain control over day-to-day operations, the deputy mayor is responsible for aligning strategy, priorities, and interagency cooperation across the public safety system.
The position also plays a central role in shaping and implementing the mayor’s public safety agenda. That can include advising on crime-reduction strategies, emergency preparedness, technology and data initiatives, and reforms related to policing, incarceration, and community safety. The deputy mayor often leads task forces, manages crisis coordination, and helps translate policy goals into citywide action.
Whether the role is filled, expanded, or restructured under Mamdani will depend on how the incoming administration chooses to organize City Hall. Historically, some mayors have elevated the position as a central command post for public safety, while others have distributed those responsibilities across multiple deputy mayors or agencies—making the job a key indicator of a mayor’s governing priorities.
