NYC Council Governmental Operations Committee Hearing on Civic Engagement and Influencer Disclosure - September 22, 2026

On Tuesday, September 22, 2026, at 10:00 AM, the New York City Council Committee on Governmental Operations, State & Federal Legislation met at 250 Broadway, 8th Floor, Hearing Room 1, chaired by Gale A. Brewer. Roll call showed Present: Brewer, Dinowitz, Feliz, Morano, Wilson, and Zhuang; Absent: Stevens. Councilmembers Carr, Ariola, and Wong, and Public Advocate Williams also attended. The committee held an oversight hearing on access to city government and the Mamdani administration's civic engagement efforts, then heard four preconsidered local laws on third-party public communications and campaign finance disclosures.

Oversight Hearing: DORIS and the Mayor's Office of Mass Engagement Testimony

• Department of Records and Information Services (DORIS) Commissioner Shonda Smith Cruz testified that DORIS provides access to more than 11.3 million digitized items, 10.5 million historical vital records, more than 74,000 government publications, and roughly 185,000 cubic feet and 400 terabytes of historical records. She said DORIS serves 65 government entities and that the city's Record Point electronic records system is used by 31 agencies, including the Mayor's Office, and manages more than 215 million records.
• DORIS described its May 2025 instant-messaging policy: instant electronic messages are transitory by default, with no expectation of retention; if a user determines a message contains substantive content, the user must move it to a format suitable for preservation. DORIS said it strongly discourages city employees from creating substantive instant messages and does not monitor agencies' active communications. DORIS also said deletion of an instant message is not in itself a violation of the citywide policy.
• DORIS explained that substantive messages are those that document or relate to the decisions, actions, or policies of a city office or agency. Councilmembers and Public Advocate Williams pressed for clearer definitions; several questioned whether the Signal group's daily talking points, updates, and clips would count as substantive. DORIS responded that communications about records are often transitory while the underlying record itself is what must be retained.
• DORIS said Signal cannot currently be archived. Its civic-plus social media archiving tool covers Facebook, X, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, YouTube, Vimeo, Nextdoor, Pinterest, and Flickr, but not BlueSky, Reddit, or WhatsApp. The 2021 social media policy treats social media posts as publications with permanent retention.
• Commissioner Tasha Van Aken testified about the Mayor's Office of Mass Engagement (OME), created on the mayor's second day in office. OME consolidated offices including the public engagement unit, NYC Service, faith-based and community partnerships, and other civic engagement functions. She cited outreach statistics: over 240 community board meetings attended by borough organizers; more than 5,800 New Yorkers at 30 events in 30 weeks; over 900,000 people supported through NYC Service programs; and a SNAP outreach effort that knocked on more than 10,000 doors, made more than 40,000 phone calls, and reached about 11,000 New Yorkers. The 2026 People's Money participatory budgeting program drew more than 134,000 ballots, with more than 26,000 cast in a language other than English.
• OME stated it does not use Signal and communicates through city email, city phones, and Teams. It said it does not maintain creator or influencer lists and referred detailed questions about influencer work to the Mayor's Office of Communications. OME said it has 20 new staff lines and a roughly $2.8 million budget, but the commissioner did not provide a filled/unfilled breakdown during the hearing.
• Minority Leader Carr, Councilmembers Dinowitz, Morano, Wong, Wilson, Ariola, and Public Advocate Williams all expressed disappointment that Mayor's Office of Communications staff, including Amelia Rowland, the director of new media who runs the influencer and Signal operation, were not present. Councilmember Morano entered a memorandum from the mayor's office chief counsel that, according to him, was dated January 15, 2022 but had metadata suggesting January 2026, stating that employees should not use WhatsApp, Signal, or any other communications app or platform for work. Morano raised the possibility of using the council's subpoena power.

Preconsidered Legislation and Campaign Finance Board Testimony

• Four preconsidered bills were heard: T2026-2555, sponsored by Minority Leader Carr, prohibiting candidates from appearing in certain government-funded third-party communications during an election campaign; T2026-1440, sponsored by Carr, requiring reporting on third-party public communications; T2026-2554, sponsored by Councilmember Feliz, requiring disclosures on third-party public communications paid for with government resources; and T2026-2553, sponsored by Councilmember Wong, requiring campaign finance disclosures in online and digital content and directing the Campaign Finance Board to issue guidance.
• First Deputy Executive Director Amanda Melillo of the New York City Campaign Finance Board (CFB) testified that the CFB began working with influencers through a vendor in 2021 and brought influencer selection in-house in 2023. In 2025, the CFB worked with 29 influencers, producing more than 70 posts on Instagram and TikTok at a total cost of $626,365, generating more than 6 million views and over 500,000 engagements, with an average engagement rate of about 5%, above the 1-3% industry average. Non-English content in Spanish, Mandarin, Korean, and Bengali generated more than 2.3 million views and more than 4,000 visits to the CFB's NYC Votes website.
• The CFB said it had only one week to review the four bills and gave preliminary feedback. It described T2026-2553, Councilmember Wong's bill, as duplicating existing CFB Rules 6-06 and 14-04 on paid-for-by disclaimers and said the charter changes did not appear necessary. It took no formal position on T2026-2555, Carr's bill broadening the existing 90-day government mass-mailing prohibition. It opposed T2026-1440 as drafted, arguing that individual-level reporting would disperse responsibility and produce duplicative or missed reports, and recommended agency-level reporting through existing advertising spending reports. It opposed T2026-2554 as drafted, saying designating the CFB as an enforcing agency was misaligned with its charter role and that shared enforcement with the Conflicts of Interest Board would create complexity and inconsistent standards.

Public Comments & Testimony

• Dr. Anya Schiffrin, Senior Lecturer at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs, testified about her forthcoming working paper, "Mapping New York City Influencers and the Funding of Public Messaging." She said her research found no systemic record keeping on city agencies' influencer relationships, inconsistent labeling and disclosure, and secrecy around hiring and payment. She discussed the mayor's invite-only Signal group, "NYC Creators Announcements," saying it appeared unpaid but raised questions about its function, access, and relationship to the traditional press list. She recommended clear and standardized disclosures, publication of influencer lists, training for city employees and agencies, and possible use of an influencer hub or model disclosure rules.
• Rachel Fowles of Reinvent Albany asked the council to pass legislation clarifying that all electronic communications creating public records, including instant messages, be archived and retrievable by FOIL officers. She said the city should define instant messages as substantive or non-substantive rather than treating them as transitory by default. Reinvent Albany also asked the council to revise T2026-2555 and T2026-1440 and not to move forward with T2026-2554 and T2026-2553 as drafted.
• Grace Rao of Citizens Union said auto-delete functions should be explicitly prohibited for official city business and that city employees should not be permitted to use any function that automatically deletes or destroys government records. She called for a uniform citywide disclosure standard for paid government advertising and influencer contracts, and said unpaid influencer communication is not inherently wrong but must not come at the expense of reporter access or involve confidential information.
• Susan Lerner of Common Cause New York questioned whether the Office of Mass Engagement was promoting a narrow model of civic engagement focused on tenant organizing rather than a broad invitation for New Yorkers to understand and affect government. She supported disclosure labels on city-initiated or city-partnered communications and generally supported the bills while recommending amendments.
• Octavio Blanco, executive editor of Uptown Voices, a hyperlocal news outlet, testified that he was not paid to cover the administration, was not on the Signal chat, and communicates with the mayor's office through normal channels. He said Uptown Voices invited all three candidates in a congressional race to appear on its podcast, rejected a $500 payment offered by a campaign, and holds a press pass. He expressed strong concern that trust was his publication's most valuable asset.
• A former city employee, Charles Diamond, testified on procurement, saying government media buys should go through procurement with selection, record keeping, and protections against political interference. He said zero-dollar contracts and unpaid work should make the city more suspicious, not less. He criticized the administration's testimony on transitory versus substantive messages as circular and said Signal was not an approved channel.
• Content creators Norberto Briseño and Taiwan Green, also known as Mr. Fingers, testified that they had never been paid by the administration and were not directed on how to message their content. Taiwan Green said he lost money by taking time off work to cover events, retains the right to criticize the mayor, and uses access to ask questions relevant to Southeast Queens. Briseño said he made videos about the administration's bus work because his audience needs factual information about city government.
• Christopher Leon Johnson, a media press credential holder, disputed those accounts, accusing Mr. Fingers and Uptown Voices of being paid through third-party agencies, saying the mayor's office controls narratives and deletes unfavorable videos, and criticizing the administration's reliance on influencers. Tim Fullerton, founder and CEO of Find Out Media and a former state and federal digital strategy official, defended the Signal group as a distribution list sharing the same information given to the press, said its members were not paid by the administration, and argued that government information is useless if it does not reach people on the platforms they use.

Key Outcomes

• The oversight item, T2026-2324, was held by the committee and filed.
• All four preconsidered local laws, T2026-2555, T2026-1440, T2026-2554, and T2026-2553, were heard and laid over by the committee; no final votes were taken.
• Several councilmembers said the Mayor's Office of Communications should appear at future hearings and suggested subpoena power if necessary to obtain testimony about the Signal influencer group and related spending.
• OME committed to follow up with borough-by-borough outreach spending, staffing, and event data, and DORIS indicated openness to continued policy discussion with the council on instant-messaging retention.
• The CFB said it would provide more detailed legislative comments after further analysis, and written testimony was accepted for 72 hours after the hearing.