Judge orders Mamdani administration to turn over rent freeze communications

Landlords allege mayor improperly influenced Rent Guidelines Board

A state judge in Manhattan on Thursday ordered the Mamdani administration to produce within five days any emails and text messages between top City Hall officials and the Rent Guidelines Board, advancing a landlord lawsuit that seeks to overturn a rent freeze scheduled to take effect Oct. 1. Justice Brendan Lantry set the Tuesday deadline over the objections of city lawyers, who had said the search would require two months and would cover communications involving 13 city officials — including the mayor — and more than a dozen rent board members and staffers.

At the hearing, Lantry acknowledged the speed-up left the court on a constrained schedule and might keep him from ruling on the landlords’ preliminary-injunction request before the freeze takes effect.

“I’m not going to operate with a shotgun to my head,” Lantry told city lawyers at the state court hearing in Manhattan.

Steven Banks, the city’s top lawyer, said removing phones from City Hall officials for even a few hours to look for communications could be disruptive. “The people on this list are running New York City,” Banks said. “Giving up their phone for four to eight hours is not an insignificant thing.”

Randy Mastro, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, countered that the city was overstating the complexity of the search. “This is not rocket science,” Mastro said.

The lawsuit challenges one of Mamdani’s signature campaign pledges. It accuses the Rent Guidelines Board of going through a “sham process” before voting 7-1 in June for zero rent increases on most rent-regulated apartments and alleges the mayor stacked the board with loyalists who manipulated data on landlord expenses and income.

Lawyers for the city dispute those characterizations. They say board members acted independently and properly reviewed market data before casting their votes.

In a ruling last week, Lantry remarked that it was “rare and unprecedented” for a candidate like Mamdani to guarantee a freeze, given that the board is supposed to act independently of the mayor’s office. “The question naturally arises: how would the mayor comply with his ‘guarantee’ to the voters to ‘freeze’ the rent unless he, or his staff, communicated with the board to ensure that the board refrained from imposing any rental increase?” the judge wrote.

The freeze is scheduled to go into effect on Oct. 1 and applies to roughly one million rent-regulated apartments. Justice Lantry has not indicated whether he will rule on the landlords’ motion for a preliminary injunction before the freeze takes effect.