Committee on Governmental Operations, State & Federal Legislation

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to today's New York City Council hearing for the Committee on Governmental Operations, State and Federal Legislation. At this time, please silence all electronic devices. If you would like to testify, you must fill out a witness slip with one of the sergeant-at-arms. Just a reminder, no one may approach the dais at any time.

Chair, we are ready to begin. Thank you very much.

I'm Gail Brewer, Chair of the Committee on Government Operations, State and Federal Legislation. I want to thank everyone for joining us today for the hearing on— we're calling it Access to Government and the Mandami Administration's Civic Engagement Efforts. I would certainly like to welcome individuals from the Department of Records and Information Services, DORIS. That's my favorite agency.

Nobody else likes it as much as I do. the Office of Mass Engagement, the Campaign Finance Board, and the Conflict of Interest Board, the public and council colleagues who have joined us today. I think Councilmember Wilson is here, and we're going to hear from the wonderful Public Advocate in a minute. In addition to oversight today, we will be hearing 4 preconsidered bills, one which is sponsored by Minority Leader Carr, in relation to prohibiting candidates from appearing in certain government-funded third-party communications during an election campaign.

Another one sponsored by Minority Leader Carr in relation to reporting on third-party public communications. And another one sponsored by Councilmember Feliz in relation to requiring disclosures on third-party public communication paid for with government resources. And finally, one sponsored by Councilmember Wong In relation to requiring campaign finance disclosures in content posted on internet websites, digital applications, and social media platforms, and directing the Campaign Finance Board to issue guidance regarding the disclosure, recordkeeping, and reporting requirements applicable to such content.

Government use of influencers has become the norm, and that's a good thing. Influencers are a good thing. But governments use influencers to increase awareness on public health issues, a good thing, boost election participation, that's needed, attract tourists, among other things. There's nothing wrong with using influencers, and they can actually help government officials reach populations that are difficult to reach through traditional media.

Not everybody can watch New York One like me, I understand. Government agencies in New York City primarily use social media influencers in 2 different ways. First, agencies work with influencers to create targeted campaigns. And one of the first examples of a successful use of social media influencers in a public awareness campaign, Health+ Hospitals used them to encourage New Yorkers to get tested. and then to get vaccinated against COVID.

Recently, the Campaign Finance Board, through its NYC Votes initiative, partnered with influencers to increase voter turnout and civic engagement. Health and hospitals and the Campaign Finance Board generally include— those campaigns include some type of disclosure that they are paid for by the city. This is not, however, the case with all city agencies, and that's the issue. There is no consistency among agencies on the wording of the disclosures, what kind of hashtags, et cetera.

The second way that the mayor in particular uses social media is more novel and very effective. At the end of the last month, a Columbia Journalism Review by the very great Dr. Anya Shiforia. She reported on the use, and she'll be here today to talk about it, of an invite-only Signal group used by the mayor's communication team to share updates, talking points, and clips to a selected group of social media influencers.

The Signal messaging app allows users to auto-delete messages. That's how Signal works. And it is not clear in what cases this feature was active. The Signal servers don't keep copies of messages. So we want to ensure that the mayor's team is following the city's document retention rules when using the app, and that's called archiving. I'm an archive nut.

I just want people to know. There also appears to be at least some overlap between the influencers who are paid to promote agency campaigns and those on the mayor's Signal distribution list.

In addition to finding out about the mayor's use of the social media influencers and the Signal app, we are also going to hear from the mayor's newly created Office of Mass Engagement. On just his second day in office, the mayor created this office, which according to the mayor was intended to create a connection between City Hall and everyday New Yorkers.

This office replaced the Community Affairs Unit, The Public Engagement Unit, the Mayor's Office of Ethnic and Community Media, the Office of Faith-Based and Community Partnerships, and the New York City Service were all placed under this new office as well, although I think one of them may have moved over to Communications. While the work of OME is consistent with the work of the Public Engagement Unit, which now reports to it, it has a greater emphasis on connecting with New Yorkers, and engaging them in governmental processes while also making sure that they are aware of their rights as New Yorkers.

New Yorkers need to know what their benefits are, and this office helps to do that. We would like to find out more how this office works and how it differs from the mayor's outreach during the election campaign. We also want to hear about any legislation that they might suggest on this topic. And obviously we want to know about FOIL and we want to know about archiving from Doris.

Those are the issues that I desperately care about.

I want to thank the following council staff for their work on this hearing. From Government Ops, Johari Frazier, Erica Cohen, and Sigmund Hamid. And from my staff, Shula Puder and Cynthia Hornig. And everyone who helps make this hearing run smoothly. I think we've also been joined by Minority Leader Carr, Councilmember Wong, And on Zoom, Councilmember Areola. And I don't know if Councilmember Carr, if you want to, or Wong, if you want to make some opening statements.

Go ahead, Mr. Carr.

Thank you, Chair Brewer, for holding this important hearing today, and thank you to Speaker Menin for her leadership on this issue. When Zohran Mamdani rode his social media stardom to the mayoralty last year, I think we all understood that there was a real paradigm shift in the way politicians engage with the public. That was made even more clear when the mayor brought his campaign communication apparatus to City Hall.

I don't think we understood the extent of that change until a recent report by the Initiative for Policy Dialogue at Columbia University, mentioned by Chair Brewer, that revealed that the mayor's office has been operating a signaled group chat called NYC Creators Announcements with over 200 social media influencers. In this group, the report found that the mayor's office shares daily talking points, videos, and other ways to spread favorable messaging about the mayor and the administration.

They are also invited to events and offered access to city officials. In response to this revelation, Amelia Rowland, who as the mayor's director of new media runs this and influenced our campaign, said, quote, at a moment of profound distrust in politics, our job is not to preserve decades-old communication norms or protect the gatekeepers who once controlled access to public information.

Thank you. End quote. Indeed, there is a public, a profound mistrust in politics today, but that mistrust is only intensified when city officials conduct business with outside entities using an encrypted messaging app with disappearing messages purposely designed to evade public scrutiny and laws that require record keeping, and when these new quote unquote gatekeepers buy their access to the mayor.

By amplifying his propaganda. It's also somewhat ironic, given Ms. Rowland's statement that the so-called legacy media she seemed to deride was the one that revealed this surreptitious partnership. What makes this new communication strategy more alarming than others is the fact that these influencers, who have built up their own brands because of the perception that they are genuine and authentic, are able to convince the public that they— these are not coordinated and yet often are, and paid for by— paid for as a message and objective of those so-called honest views.

According to the New York Times, an artificial intelligence analysis of more than a dozen Instagram influencers who work with the mayor's team found that of 178 videos related to the administration, the overwhelming majority were positive. The Federal Trade Commission has laws to prevent deceptive advertisement, including new rules for disclosure for social media influencers. There are also campaign finance rules that require disclosure of payments to anyone who is working on behalf of a candidate and their committees.

But there is a big loophole when it comes to this type of relationship between influencers and government entities. The legislation we are introducing today aims to close that loophole by requiring the disclosure of these of these relationships. It will let us know who is collaborating with the mayor's office and the city agencies, the subject matter of these messages, and whether they are being paid for by the government for such messaging, and if so, how much.

These are basic guardrails that will protect against misrepresentation and give the public the full picture about the message they are receiving. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. There you go. Thank you very much. Councilmember Wong, do you want to make a statement? I'll go straight to the questions. Okay. All right. So now then, we're going to hear from the Public Advocate.

Thank you, Madam Chair. My name is Jumaane Williams, Public Advocate of the City of New York. I want to thank Chair Brewer and members of the governmental Operations, State and Federal Legislative Committee for holding this hearing and for the opportunity to share the statement. In order to create effective civic engagement, New Yorkers should readily understand who is communicating with them, in what capacity, and with what resources.

City agencies use social media to communicate information about various services, emergencies, and opportunities. The city's own social media policy recognizes that these platforms provide agencies with ways to directly and meaningfully reach constituents and disseminate information about services, it may provide. Currently, social media content from NYC agencies is branded as such, and individuals can see that it comes from a government source.

Simultaneously, the ever-changing digital landscape creates new questions about how New Yorkers will continue to be able to distinguish official government communications from communications distributed by third parties. At its core, government communication should be rooted in transparency. New Yorkers should know who is communicating with them and whether public resources are being used. In a moment where deepfakes and misinformation from the highest level of government make a public discernment increasingly difficult, it's even more important than ever here in New York City that we don't just follow every rule for compliance and good government, but that we build a trust with the public that federal counterparts in Washington, D.C. seem intent on destroying.

The New York City Department of Records and Information Services, DORIS, which apparently is the favorite of Gale Brewer, 2025 policy on instant electric— electronic messages explicitly states that messages that document decisions, actions, or policies an office or agency makes must be retained and preserved. The policy further establishes that these offices and agencies must set procedures for gathering these messages, including but not limited to screenshots or exporting data.

This raises particular concerns when city employees or agencies use third-party messaging apps such as WhatsApp and Signal with automatic deletion or disappearing message features. While these outside applications would be more than appropriate for personal communications, the message delete delegation, uh, delegation feature violates public records and data retention laws. These vanishing messages prevent government transparency, making public communication unrecoverable for Freedom of Information or open records requests.

Using these apps, even if no official records were deleted, raises questions at minimum in the public, and those are questions that should not be— should not need to be answered if the same permissible conversations occurred by other methods. As public servants, I believe it is a best practice to not invite questions of secrecy in the course of doing our jobs.

There are a number of pieces of legislation from my colleagues, Councilmember Feliz, Wong, and Carr, that seem to address this. I look forward to reading them more deeply and understanding how it will address the concerns we have. I also look forward to hearing from the city agencies about all of the stories that we've heard. I did want to just make clear, I don't know if the administration has done anything wrong at all.

I think that's what this hearing is also about. I do know in this time period we have to create and be convincing about an atmosphere of trust, particularly in the ever-changing communication and AI space. on a backdrop of where we hear from small and particularly ethnic-specific media about their lack of access. And so I'm hoping today that the administration will assuage some of the concerns that we've heard.

And I couldn't think of a better person to help lead that conversation in council than the current chair, Gabriel. Thank you. Thank you very much. That's some very kind words.

And now I'd like to turn the proceedings over to the committee counsel to administer the oath. Good morning. We will now hear from the administration. Before we begin, I will administer the affirmation. Panelists, would you please raise your right hand? Do you affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth before this committee and to respond honestly to councilmember questions?

Yes. All right. You may begin when ready.

Hello. Good morning. Chair Brewer, members of City Council, it's a true pleasure to introduce the work of the Department of Records and Information Services, describe policy, records management, and retention. My name is Shanta Smith-Cruz, and also, if you are reading along, this is not a draft, so you can delete that from the top of the page. I'm the newly appointed commissioner for the Department for Records and Information Services. affectionately known as Doris, and we appreciate your affection, Chair Brewer.

I am joined by my colleagues Rose Nagle Indigoyen, Director of Municipal Records, Lauren Gilbert, Director of Municipal Library behind me, and Sylvia Collar, Director of Municipal Archives, also sitting behind me. I'm also grateful to be here alongside Commissioner Commissioner Tasha Van Aken, Van Aken, and her colleagues from the Office of Mass Engagement. My background is as a writer, editor, academic librarian, community archivist, faculty member in information science, and native New Yorker.

I want to first briefly introduce Doris and its function. In accordance with the charter, Doris is organized into 3 main divisions. The municipal archives, a municipal library, and municipal records. Doris provides the public with access to more than 11.3 million digitized items, including historical photographs, maps, and documents. The Historical Vital Records Platform provides free online access to 10.5 million high-quality copies of historical birth, death, and marriage records.

The Municipal Library hosts the Government Publications Portal, a growing online collection of more than 74,000 reports and publications issued by city agencies. We respond to more than 28,000 reference requests and provide access to approximately 185,000 cubic feet and more than 400 terabytes of historical city records. Along with a collection of more than 400,000 books, government reports, studies, and other publications.

Approximately 77% of the archival holdings require preservation work, and we have a conservation unit that oversees the rehousing, conservation treatments, and other specialized measures. The department's Municipal Records Management Division develops and administers records management policies, operates records storage facilities, provides one-to-one liaison records management services to 65 government entities, and we oversee the city's government's transition to digital records management.

We manage the city's open records FOIL portal, which is in process of onboarding all agencies of the City of New York. including City Council, who is slated to onboard within the month. So that's really exciting, into open records. To support records management across the entire city, records management is serviced by records management officers based within each city agency.

Doris has 5 records management officer liaisons, one of whom is with me here today, including— who is the department director, and we train records management officers and provide them with resources informed by national field standards, and all records management policies are written in collaboration with the Law Department. The records management lifecycle contends with a basic archival principle.

Not all records are archival. Instead, we ask, is the record active? Is the record substantive? For how long does it need to be retained? Does it have historical and enduring value? Answers to these questions lead the record series retention schedules, which can be as long as 99 years or perpetuity. On average, 3 to 8, maybe 10 years. and as low as a schedule of 0.

Which brings me to instant messaging policy. Policies and practices regarding instant messages relate to the May 25— May 2025 policy. This policy was in close consultation with the Law Department and the Office of the Chief Counsel. Doris updated its policy on instant electronic messaging records. And I brought copies of the policy so that you can— we can read along together.

So if one of the guards could help me pass along the document. There he goes. I'm a librarian, so I like read-alongs. I didn't take one. I have one for myself. And so if— when you receive it, you'll note that it does state— I don't actually— It's okay. In bold and underline on page 2, instant electronic messages.

Oh, wait, sorry. Okay, on page 2 in bold and underlined so that it's not hidden. And this policy has actually been posted online since its development in May 2025. Instant electronic messages are considered transitory by default. There is no expectation of retention. If a user determines the content of a message is substantive, and should be maintained, the user is charged with transferring the content to a format more appropriate for long-term storage and use.

End quote. Under this policy, instant messaging or text messages are treated similarly to a phone call or a conversation at a conference. By default, such communications are deemed transitory and therefore not subject to retention. But if the content of the message happens to be substantive in connection with City business, then the City employee should move that content to other platforms for retention.

The policy also strongly discourages City employees from creating instant electronic messages that are substantive in nature. When records are found to be substantive and do have enduring value, they become archival. The Archives' work in preservation and access considers the changing formats and environments in which New York City government conducts its business.

And that brings us to digital solutions and considerations. Doris has initiated the city's engagement with the electronic records governance tool, RecordPoint. RecordPoint enables agencies to categorize electronic records, in accordance with their existing retention schedules, and is being implemented across all agencies. To date, 31 agencies, including the Office of the Mayor, uses the system, which manages more than 215 million records.

This tool empowers agencies to enforce retention and disposal to their mapped data repositories. Properly managing records across their lifecycle. This tool, however, only maps to government-supplied tools where substantive records are held. This is because we as a field have a ways to go before these types of tools are manageable across all types of digital platforms. Our policies aim to keep up to date with the 2026 modern-day use of various digital tools and platforms.

To that end, we must also consider that all digital platforms serve different purposes. For example, transitory messages in a messaging platform may— they operate very different— at a very different speed than a social media post, which is by default considered a publication and has a policy of archival permanence. I didn't bring a copy of our social media policy.

But our social media policy states, quote, social media records have a permanent retention and are required to be transferred to the municipal library, end quote. The social media policy was last updated in 2021. However, Local Law 41 in 2025 expanded the requirement to maintain a publicly accessible and searchable online database that contains all publicly viewable content and metadata shared by a government official's social media account.

We work with OTI to contract with a third-party vendor, an archival tool called Civic+, or ArchiveSocial. Civic+'s function to capture agency archival information. Doris is now able to automate and facilitate this process, supporting the onboarding work of connecting the social media accounts of officials and agencies. Civic+ is currently capable of archiving the following platforms: Facebook, X, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, YouTube, Vimeo, Nextdoor, Pinterest, Flickr.

They are always aware— they are aware of the city's interest in Bluesky, Reddit, and WhatsApp, but cannot provide an estimate of when those platforms might be added. If a platform is eventually added, CivicPlus would be able to go back to the start of the account and retroactively harvest all of the content. As it relates to the bill that was posed by Councilmember Carr, Doris does not see this new process as within the jurisdiction of our work.

We are not asked to report on other agencies' work, but as the stewards of the government publications portal, we can supply the tool for reporting that another agency may use to upload within the preexisting portal.

So I'd like to end by grounding us. We are here to be responsive to New York City's open access to government history and records. Our charter mandate is clearly written and does not, for example, ask us to become a reporting agency for non-municipal behaviors. Such as what may be being recommended in Carr's social media bill. Instead, we operate in service to community, to archival practice, library public service, and to stewarding efficient records.

I've provided a lengthy testimony to be as informative as possible to underscore process and practice for our collective aim of transparency through government records, which I hope has been made clear this morning. So now I thank you for your attention and welcome your questions and pass the mic to Commissioner Van Auken.

Thank you, Commissioner. Good morning. Thank you, Chair Brewer, and the members of the Committee on Governmental Operations for this opportunity. My name is Tasha Van Auken, and I'm the Commissioner of the Mayor's Office of Mass Engagement. Mayor Mamdani established the Office of Mass Engagement on his second day in office out of a belief that good governance requires bringing New Yorkers into the work of government.

Since then, we've reached hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers to engage them about new policies, help them navigate city services, support them through extreme weather events, and develop their civic participation. New Yorkers care a lot about their city, but we're also famously busy people. It's hard to get informed, get involved, and have a voice when city government seems so opaque and difficult to navigate.

New Yorkers are juggling jobs, kids, caring for elders, and much more. We can't wait for them to come to us. We meet New Yorkers where they are, help them access services and participate in the decisions that affect their lives. A benefit only helps someone if they know it exists, that they are eligible for it, and understand how to access it.

A public hearing is only truly public if New Yorkers know it is happening, know how to participate, and believe their voice belongs in the room. OME's job is to demystify government processes and add new pathways for New Yorkers to engage with policies and see the positive impacts of their participation. We connect several long-established offices for civic engagement, like the Public Engagement Unit, NYC Service, and the Civic Engagement Commission, with new initiatives to educate and involve New Yorkers.

We are able to draw on the deep well of knowledge and relationships that these historic engagement offices offer while expanding the ways that New Yorkers can participate in government. Some of OME's teams include the Office of Faith-Based Partnerships, which fosters reciprocal relationships with New York's diverse faith communities. Our team of faith liaisons have built relationships at over 120 faith-based events and meetings since OME's inception and facilitated the mayor's presence at nearly half of those events.

These range from visiting houses of worship with the mayor to interfaith and holiday event— holiday events like the 38th Annual Pagua Parade, Passover at Gracie Mansion, and backpack distribution with the New York Disaster Interfaith Services, to name just a few. Faith-Based Partnerships supports roundtables that bring New York's faith communities into deeper engagement with city government. We also hosted 3 interfaith tenant canvases, one of which was OME's highest attended canvas with nearly 50 attendees, forging a new model for faith-based civic engagement.

Our community liaisons bring a range of communities into the work of governance, develop meaningful heritage events that connect the mayoralty to the cultural life of our city, and build civic leadership in under-engaged communities. OME community liaisons have visited community-based organizations in all 5 boroughs, supported the planning of cultural events at Gracie Mansion, like the African Heritage Reception and the Mid-Autumn Festival, staffed parades from the West Indian Day Parade to the Mexican Independence Day Parade, and attended community events on behalf of the Mayor's Office from the Hong Kong Dragon Boat Festival to the recent Battle of Jollof, which brings the West African community together over food, sport, and culture.

Our citywide Constituent Affairs team coordinates proactive, responsive action to New Yorkers' issues, from deed theft to housing discrimination, trash pickup, flood response, and much more. For example, Constituent Affairs recently coordinated across multiple agencies to take action to aid a school experiencing recurring flooding. Our Emergency Response Team delivers crucial information and support to New Yorkers through snowstorms, wildfire smoke, and floods.

We also provide compassionate touchpoints and wraparound services to New Yorkers after serious tragedies. Our Emergency Response Team organized a coastal zone preparedness call. Over 150 New Yorkers living in areas most vulnerable to coastal storms received life-saving information about how to prepare. And our borough organizing team maintains strong relationships with community boards and other longstanding civic partners while also building new relationships with tenants, resident leaders, community-based organizations, and other neighborhood networks.

Borough organizing builds hyper-local relationships to create more ways for New Yorkers to organize around the issues affecting them and engage directly with City Hall. Borough organizers have attended over 240 community board meetings, district service cabinet meetings, borough-wide cabinet meetings, one-on-ones with district managers and/or chairs, and other ad hoc meetings to build relationships with community boards and dig in on borough-specific issues.

Our events team has supported over 30 events in 30 weeks attended by over 5,800 New Yorkers. From New York City 101s, where New Yorkers get educated on how our government works, to events like Pickup at the People's House and cultural heritage events where New Yorkers can see their heritage uplifted at City Hall. Our co-governance team supports agencies and the administration in building out models for shared accountability with New Yorkers and advocates in policymaking.

For example, they supported the Mayor's Office of Child Care and Early Childhood Education on building a co-governance table for child care workers that led to the launch of a $3 million emergency grant program specifically in response to the needs and gaps identified by this table. This is yet another way that OME strives to bring New Yorkers into the work of city government.

The Campaigns team empowers the most impacted New Yorkers to participate in the decisions that affect them. New York City volunteers led by our staff have knocked on over 10,000 doors, leading to nearly 2,500 successful organizing conversations with New Yorkers. In these conversations, we listened to their concerns, shared information about their rights, and invited them out to educational events.

We've seen great success in this work. At the recent bus rider town hall with Mayor Mamdani and the Department of Transportation, 70% of attendees were from zip codes directly impacted by the bus plan. Our teams also work extremely collaboratively with each other and with agencies across the city. Emergency Response and the Office of Faith-Based Partnerships worked together during heat wave alerts, and OME emailed heat warning and cooling center information to over 600,000 New Yorkers.

Our Office of Faith-Based Partnerships tapped their stakeholder networks to get real-time updates of where New Yorkers were most impacted and used that information to recommend cooling center locations. The Office of Faith-Based Partnerships and the Office of Community-Based Partnerships worked with the emergency response teams and MOYA to broaden City Hall's reach by translating urgent safety messaging into relevant languages.

Contributing to an 800-entry-long list of stakeholders and faith institutions for email blasts, and overall increasing the reach of rapid response messaging. Our campaigns, borough organizing, and events teams have worked with the Department of Transportation to increase bus rider participation and feedback in the city's bus action plan, and with the mayor's office to protect tenants to reach out to tenants living in distressed buildings throughout the city, as well as to landlords and property owners, enabling thousands of New Yorkers to participate in strengthening their communities and government.

The OME umbrella also includes a few incredible offices whose leadership will be available for questions. The Civic Engagement Commission, and we have CEC Chair Dr. Sarah Said over here, which stewards participatory budgeting and language support at poll sites. Over 134,000 New Yorkers made their voice heard in the People's Money participatory budgeting program in 2026, with over 26,000 ballots in a language other than English.

New York City Service, and we have Chief Service Officer Laura Rog over here, New York City Service, which seeds a spirit of volunteerism across the city, bringing people together to support each other and our city. New York City Service envisions a city where New Yorkers are united by service, building a culture where neighbors uplift one another and take shared responsibility for the success of our city.

This year, New York City Service has supported over 900,000 people through its service-based programs and partnerships, with over 50,000 people engaged in service. The Public Engagement Unit, and we have Deputy Commissioner De La Cruz right here, which connects New Yorkers to benefits. Their staff has highly skilled outreach specialists who knock on doors, make calls, send peer-to-peer texts, and much more.

For example, when the federal government passed new work requirements for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, putting thousands of people at risk of losing their benefits, PEU mobilized to inform SNAP recipients who were highest risk of losing their benefits as a result of the federal government policy changes. By knocking on more than 10,000 doors and making more than 40,000 person-to-person phone calls, we reached 11,000 New Yorkers to help them keep their SNAP benefits.

OME's goal is to foster a spirit of civic engagement across the city. And we welcome opportunities to partner with the council and council members to better serve New Yorkers. New York City has a long history of wielding the power of our city government to engage New Yorkers borough by borough, neighborhood by neighborhood, block by block. But today we face new challenges and at a different scale.

More extreme weather, a cost of living crisis, and deepening inequality. Trust in government is at an all-time low, eroding our ability to get feedback and craft responsive policy. OME is both scaling up historic traditions of civic engagement and forging new models to get all New Yorkers involved in meeting today's challenges and building an affordable future. Thank you.

Thank you very much. We've been joined by Councilmembers Dinowitz and Morano and Felice on Zoom. And I will call on my colleagues for questions in a minute. I just— I have a few. Just to talk a little bit more about mass engagement and the structure. I know that you have public engagement, faith-based and community partnerships, New York City Service.

Mention some of the other ones that you— welcome to include. But I'm interested in ethnic and community media, which I think is now under— Comms. And can you just explain, there was an Executive Order 23 in September, last— recently, which gave the Mayor's Office of Communications authority over that office. But it did not mention rescinding Executive Order 7.

I mean, that's the office that has a lot of discussion. Yeah. Can you explain what your office does and then what happened to this office, if it's not part of you anymore? Thank you for that question, Chair. The Office of Community and Ethnic Media does indeed live under the mayor's communication team and not the Office of Mass Engagement per the executive order you mentioned.

I don't have many details, and I'm happy to get back to you, but I would refer you to the comms office for further details about the Mayor's Office of Community and Ethnic Media. I do know that they have a new executive director, who will be starting soon. Right. That's Mazen Minahamouda, who will be head of the Office of Ethnic and Community Media, as I understand it.

But Amelia Roland, she's now also in that office. And what's her role? Do you know? I'm sorry, I'll have to refer you to the Communications Department for further details. Okay.

And then also just for Adora, so I understand what you're stating in terms of substantive. I don't know what that means, though. In other words, How is one supposed to know what gets included in what you would say should stay in the archival world? How is one supposed to know that? Because to me, sending out material regarding policy on, I don't know, composting, anything, would be substantive.

Go ahead. Thank you so much for the question, Chair. I would say that people know what substantive is based on training. And we have lots of training. Training is continuous. It's both at Doris and at the agencies citywide. So the way that we administer training at Doris is we have multiple methods of sharing information. So I'm calling it training, but it's also information sharing.

It includes a liaison model where the— there is a one-to-one relationship between liaisons at Doris and the agency's records management officer. They can speak to each other anytime, and they're sort of on speed dial with each other. We also have quarterly records management officer meetings, for which Doris oversees, and all of the records management officers come. They receive updates.

They receive new policies. They're given guidance, and they're also given the opportunity for feedback and conversation. And ultimately, it's a professional development moment during those meetings. Finally, we have training as part of a new employee onboarding, including a presence on the DCAS's video learning platform. So that oversees— that overviews records management policies and principles for all employees.

Most recently, we did supply guidance in April of 2026 to all agencies to support the determination and discernment of transitory versus substantive messages. And it was formatted as like a one-pager, so to speak, like nicely designed. And it was an easy-to-follow summary guidance with recommended actions and practices to avoid, which linked to the policies and reiterated that instant messages and text messages are considered transitory and should not be used as the only record of substantive discussion, policy, or final decisions.

I don't quite understand what— in other words, when somebody sends out material material regarding some of the topics that I mentioned, or getting out information today about a wonderful 11:00 a.m. press conference that the mayor is having about DoorDash and getting lots of money for the city and blah, blah, blah, that would be substantive to me. So that would mean that it would have to be, as you— as I understand your guidance, would have to be taken off of Signal and put onto a different platform, or that's not correct?

I'm trying to understand What we're talking about today, what does it fit into? Thank you for the question. I would say the way to approach it is that records management focuses on the function of the record, or the function that we operate in as business, as city business. And so, it's not focused on, say— let me say it differently.

It's up to the agencies to determine what— to help support their staff in understanding what is substantive and transitory ultimately. So it's really up to the user. One should, in their utterance of the words, have a sense of whether something is transitory or not, or substantive or not, before they decide what platform it should exist on. In my world of 40 years, that means it needs some help in terms of defining what it is.

I would just say— but that's helpful, what you are stating. In terms of— FOIL. Now, again, I'm a FOIL nut, just like I'm an archive nut. So then the question is, all of this material that's going out under Signal or anything else, wouldn't that be FOILable? And if it's FOILable, wouldn't it have to be retained? Thank you for the question.

The Freedom of Information Law governs records, and that's what FOIL is in reference to. But under the Freedom of Information Law, it's only records that the city agencies possess or maintain that need to be produced. So as long as it exists as a record within city agencies, if it's an active record, if it's a record that's archived, if it's a record that sits in its retention schedule, it's in a box in a warehouse, we can grab it and send it off.

But if it does not exist, instant messages are not considered records. I think that's the issue that we're coming up against. Okay. So they don't require retention. So they can exist, but they don't— they're not required to exist as records under the DORIS 2025 policy. Yeah, I think this one needs updating. We're definitely open to talking with you about the policy as it stands.

In terms of the Office of Mass Engagement, you listed some of the wonderful things that you're doing, and you did it in a very clear fashion, because I didn't know what the hell the office did before that, so I appreciate it. But can you just give us some, like, just generally, are there, like, how many initiatives you're working on?

You mentioned some of them, but how do you decide what's going to be a campaign? How do you decide what you're going to work on? How does that process work? Thank you, Chair, for the question. Our main focus with our campaigns is that they are touching on the issues that New Yorkers bring up time and time again.

So often that centers around affordability in New York City. We are in month 9, so we are still in the beginning of this work, and we really look forward to working with you, other council members, on future campaigns that might be worthwhile. We know that you all really understand your constituents and have your ears to the ground, and so we're, we're very interested in collaborating.

Most of the time, we're building campaigns. So our current campaign is, just to give you an example, is called Talk to Tenants, and it's an outreach campaign to tenants who live in buildings with high rates of violation. This campaign, we do not— we are not running it in a vacuum. So we are working on this outreach campaign along with the Mayor's Office to Protect Tenants and HPD's partners in preservation.

So our work is also defined by work that other agencies are doing. Okay. I mean, how do you— I mean, I certainly went to the forum in East Harlem, but I saw all the follow-up that takes place, and then the next step is to do what you're talking about. But how do you measure success for any campaign?

I suppose in your situation you could see, do X number of buildings get the services they need, and are people not calling 311? I don't know. How do you measure success for Thank you for that question. I love that question. We think a lot about that, and I think it really varies depending on what the purpose of the campaign is.

So our current campaign, Talk to Tenants, we want to make sure that tenants understand their rights and that they know how to connect to other tenants and they know how to form a tenant union and fight for their rights. Earlier this year, we ran a shorter campaign to increase turnout at the Rent Guidelines Board hearings, and as an example to your question, our goal there was to increase turnout to the hearings, which we did.

Turnout more than doubled. So it really depends on, on what the campaign is about, what the outreach is about, and what we're hoping to help support New Yorkers in doing through the work. The public advocate and I have testified at those damn hearings for the last 100 years, and so you definitely did turn out more people. I can tell you that.

That was good.

The Special Projects Unit is part of the Public Engagement Unit. What does the Special Projects Unit do? Thank you. I'm going to pass it over to Deputy Commissioner de la Cruz. Thank you for that question. I appreciate the opportunity to be able to speak about the work we do at PEU. Our special projects team is one of the 2 main core programs of the Public Engagement Unit.

This team primarily focuses on benefits access. This is a field team dedicated to conduct outreach to connect New Yorkers to the benefits and services that they may be eligible for and that are available to them through the city. We conduct outreach door-to-door, via phones, via peer-to-peer text messages, and focus on handholding New Yorkers in navigating the complexities of services like SNAP, fare fares, childcare, and more.

More recently, this team spearheaded our outreach around the SNAP work eligibility requirements. They door knocked, um, more than 10,000 doors, made more than 40,000 phone calls, and spoke with over 11,000 New Yorkers to inform them about the work eligibility requirements and make sure that the people understood the actions they needed to take in order to keep their benefits.

So that would be a situation where you could use influencers to tell people that they need to sign up in order to not lose their benefits for work or volunteer. Do you have some sense of whether you've done that, number one? And number two, are you going to be publishing for the public to know? I mean, I have been in enough forums to know the numbers.

I can't remember for those who would be cut off if in fact they don't participate and volunteer or work, whatever other crazy ideas the federal government has. So, Are you going to be telling the public what kinds of efforts have been successful, number one? And number two, do you use influencers to talk about what you're doing or to help you do what you do?

To your question about whether we're going to be telling the public about how to make sure that they keep their benefits, we're going to continue to do that work. No, I'm asking you, will you be telling people what the outcome is? In other words, successful. I can't remember. There's a huge number of New Yorkers who would be cut off if they do not participate, right?

So will you be publishing that information as to what's been successful or not? I think that falls under the scope of the Department of Social Services to publish the information. Okay. What about using influencers to tell— to get your message? Is that something that you're doing? We do not work with influencers. We do not have budget for that.

I mean, our core priority is to make sure that as many New Yorkers as possible are aware about the benefits and services that they need, making sure that as many New Yorkers as possible know about changes that may come to the benefits and services available to them through the city. We welcome the opportunity to work with people who are interested in spreading that message, but we do not work with influencers at this time.

Okay. Back to the Commissioner.

What safeguards are in place to ensure that the office is not engaging in political work? Thank you for that question. There are established legal rules governing separation between government activity and political activity, and our office, everyone in it, operates within those rules. I take those rules very seriously, and everyone in our office takes those rules very seriously.

Our office's work is focused on government functions, connecting New Yorkers to services and information, soliciting public opinion, and expanding participation in civic life. Okay, so what kind of training do you do to make sure that people don't do political work? It's hard sometimes for people not to do that. They don't know. Thank you. It's a good question.

We do have different trainings. I would have to follow up with you on the specifics. But it is something that we take very seriously across the office. Now back to signals. My understanding is that in January, the head of the chief counsel to the mayor said to all mayoral agencies Do not use Signal. Do you know anything about that memo?

Have you paid any attention to it? Or that wouldn't be under you, that would be under the other office of communications? Because you guys don't use Signal, is that correct? We do not use Signal as an office. So how do you communicate with your many offices? In other words, you got to— all the people you're engaging with?

That's a good question. We use our city email, our city phones, our city City Teams chats. Okay. Just so you know, it's my understanding that that memo did go out to everybody, so it's kind of strange that we're all using Signal for communication. We can use it for other things.

I will now call on Minority Leader Carr and then Public Advocate Williams to ask questions. Thank you again, Chair Brewer. Commissioners, good to see you both. Thank you for being here today. My first question is, how many social media influencers have worked with the mayor's office or the various city agencies since the beginning of the calendar year?

Doris would not have the answer to that question. We do not have the answer to that question either. I would refer you to the communications department. Right. So we're having a hearing about this very topic, and 2 agency heads were sent here who don't have the answer to that question. Just so you know, they were invited and they declined to participate.

Just so you know, Councilmember. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. I wonder why they declined. How much has the city spent on the campaign so far, to your knowledge? On these campaigns of social media influencers, do you know how much has been spent? I do not have that information. No. Okay. I think we're going to get the same answer here, but I'm going to ask anyway.

Do you know what the costs are for each campaign and how those amounts and budgets are determined? Thank you for the question, but I do not have that answer. Okay. Can you provide an example of how the relationships work between the social media influencers and the contracting office or agency? How the relationship is solicited, how they're determined, you know, who is chosen or approached to do those kinds of third-party communications?

Thank you, Councilmember. Our office is very focused on face-to-face communication, so for that question, I would also refer you to the communications team. Right. So again, a face-to-face agency or office is here speaking on behalf of the administration on a topic that has nothing to do with face-to-face communications. What are the rules for publicly disclosing these kinds of relationships?

I would refer you to the comms team. Okay. Where can the public find any information relating to this topic? Who is collaborating with the various agencies and offices and the breakdown of who is being paid, who they are, et cetera, what kind of messaging they are doing? Again, I would refer you to the communications team. Okay. Are there any requirements that these disclosures are a part of messages themselves?

Are you aware of that? I don't have any details about that. Okay. Has the mayor's office or any agency sought guidance from COIB or the law department or any other entity on how to properly disclose any of these relationships to the public and what records should be preserved about communications with these influencers? I don't have those details.

Would refer you. And I could respond. Thank you for the question related to records that would be retained related— can you just ask that portion of the question again? Sure. So has the mayor's office or any agency, including, I guess, Doris, sought guidance from the Conflicts of Interest Board or the Law Department or any other entity on how to properly disclose any of these relationships with social media influencers to the public and what records relating to those relationships or those communications should be preserved?

Thank you for that question. I would say that the Conflicts of Interest Board has not submitted to us any guidance or any information related to this. If it is created, Then we would likely receive it at some point down the line when the records are transferred over, but we haven't received anything. So nothing on the end of Doris, but you couldn't speak to the other parts of city government?

No, I wouldn't be able to speak to those parts.

Okay. You know, I don't have any further questions. I mean, obviously the questions that I think really needed to be answered are not being answered here today, and I think that the panel that was sent here was sent missing crucial components, crucial parts of the administration who could talk in more detail about the very topic of the hearing we're looking to address, which is who are the social media influencers that have been contracted either by the mayor's office or other parts of city government to do third-party messaging?

Why? For what purpose? On what topics? I think that these are crucial oversight issues that we're duly empaneled to address, and I thank the chair again for for bringing us together to try to get those answers. But oversight only works when both sides of the divide between the legislature and the executive participate in the process. So I appreciate all of you coming here to talk about your particular slices of this pie.

I think they're part of the conversation too. But it's incredibly disappointing and just outright ridiculous that we're having a hearing on a very important topic, a topic that was clearly defined, and no one who is able to talk about the, the meat and potatoes of this issue from the perspective of the administration or the mayor's office is here today to do so.

So with that being said, I turn it back to the chair.

Thank you very much. I really appreciate what you had to say. Public Advocate Williams, and then Councilmember Wilson. Thank you very much, Madam Chair. As everyone knows, I have great respect for this administration, so it upsets me that they have me agreeing with Councilman McCarroll very much. But I am also disappointed that the communications, the folks who should be here are not.

I am coming from the point of view that I don't know that anything was wrong, done wrong, but there were questions that were raised by this article that I believe the public should hear answers to so that they can feel assured that nothing wrong occurred. But the fact that the correct folks aren't here doesn't really help that story.

And so I don't know what to say except the right people should be here so that we can ask questions and people can hear the answers. And so it is frustrating that that hasn't happened. But I do want to ask some questions about what was testified. And I will say, my belief is that most elected officials are struggling with this.

So having a better understanding is really important.

I just want to be clear. Is it, is it the understanding of the law that messages through text, through Signal, through WhatsApp do not have to be retained because of the nature of the communication? Thank you for the question, Public Advocate Williams. Um, the nature of how a record is structured and how we define records, and the nature of using instant messaging, any type of instant messaging, is that it is transitory.

And so there is no expectation for their attention. I want to be clear what that means, no expectation. So it doesn't— if it's not retained there's no law or policy that's been broken. Is that what you're saying? Thank you for that question. That is correct. I could say more, but that is correct. No, please say more. This is, this is actually, I think, probably news to a lot of folks who are hearing it.

I think as we've struggled with this, retention has been more on the leaning more on the retention side than not. So I'm really interested in really fleshing this out. So you can feel free to say more. I appreciate it. I want to pass it over to the Director of Records Management, Rose Nagle Indigo, for some deep explanation here.

Thank you. So thank you for the question, and thank you, Commissioner. Records are scheduled according to their function, not according to the format in which they exist. And that is true for all records. The format of instant messaging is intended for instant messages, right? Short communications that convey a brief message. The format does not provide the opportunity for preservation natively in these applications for the most part.

So the policy of the City of New York, the 2025 policy, as our commissioner indicated, states that by default, these messages that a person would choose to send in this format is considered to be transitory and has a zero retention period. If somebody finds that they have created a substantive message in this format, they are charged with the responsibility of moving it to a format that allows for preservation.

Okay, so it's up to each one to determine whether or not they have sent deceptive messages, is that correct? That is what the policy states, yes. Okay, so when Governor Cuomo switched to BlackBerry to try to get away from communication, he didn't have to. He could have just stuck with Signal or WhatsApp. I'm grabbing it back. Thank you for the question.

I didn't know anything about Governor Cuomo's BlackBerry use, but I will say that there is— we provide as a city many modes of communication. So we have— and the city oversees specific platforms, and we know what those are. If it's email, our SharePoint suite, Outlook, which is also email, OneDrive, there are various electronic records that we have access to and that we're able to adequately archive or retain.

And those that don't exist on those platforms are unfortunately unable to— they are not able to be retained, technologically speaking. So if we get 4 requests for texts, let's say regular text message, SMS, we don't have to respond, in your, in your view, to those FOIL requests for text messages? Thank you for that question. When you receive a FOIL request, if the record exists, then one should go ahead and find the record.

So, I think that whether or not we have access to those messages, those text messages, may be dependent upon the individual. If they are no longer here in government, if they're currently here, if the text exists, at all. So if it's a record that exists, then— But if it didn't because it was deleted, nothing wrong had happened?

We are unable to provide FOIL responses to records that do not exist, correct. Got it. Okay. This is quite interesting. I'm going to have probably some follow-up off— like, I just want to have— this is very interesting to me. We would love to talk to you more. I'd love to talk to you. I'd also love to talk to communications.

And so, again, I just want to reiterate, I think for New Yorkers and smaller ethnic media that have been really trying to get access, they deserve to hear some of the answers to their questions. So thank you, and thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you very much. Just back to this substantive, picking up on the Public Advocate, is there a review for whether something is substantive versus transitory?

I'm not sure I would know. In other words, how do we know that? Example, you're sending something out, Signal, via Signal. It's to a group of influencers. You get a response back from one that is a very substantive response. It gets deleted under perhaps, perhaps not. But why— how would I know if that was substantive or not?

What's the definition? Thank you for the question. And in fact, Doris does create a list of definitions that exist for all agencies to see. It's online for anybody to see. We have over 100 definitions of records management terms and what they mean. But the substantive messages definition was pulled out and put into the policy for tech— the 2025 policy for instant messaging.

And it states that it's— and it's on page 2, right beneath transitory. And it states substantive messages are messages which document or relate to the decisions, actions, or policies of a city office or agency. policy, and it identifies those messages as being those that ought to be— they must be retained and transferred to a format and platform that allows for their proper preservation.

DORIS does not monitor city agency communications, so we can't— I can't speak to any particular incident. I never would be able to. But that said, the deletion of instant messages or text messages is not in and of itself a violation of the citywide policy, the 2025 citywide policy. citywide policy of Doris.

Next is Councilmember Wilson and then Councilmember Dinowitz. Thank you. So in relation to the Signal activity that's the topic of this hearing today, has Doris assessed whether substantive government messages were deleted before they could be preserved? And how do you assess that for when— for any agency or that may engage in signal activity? Thank you for that question.

Doris does not monitor active communication channels within government employees. So, we're not able to do that work. But we do anticipate that each agency has received the training that they need to make those delineations on their own. So there's— if the— if a user— if the impetus is on the user to decide whether a message is transitory or substantive, there is training provided to those agencies so that their staff can make that decision?

Thank you for the question. I'll say a little bit more about it since we're asking continually, and I think Oh, Williams left. I was going to quote him, but I won't quote him now. To say that though we do not typically create specific guidance related to formats, the policy on instant messaging was created and generated in consultation with the Law Department and the Office of the Chief Counsel.

And so, we don't limit any authority to any use of specific platforms. We just provide guidance. And of course, city agencies may be the ones to provide stricter policies related to specific platforms because of the training that we provide with them— provide to them and the guidance we provide to them. So nothing in the current policy prohibits the use of signal messaging.

And agent— we sort of set it as a floor and not the ceiling. So So we say, you— this is the bare minimum of what you need to know, and then agencies may take it upon themselves to provide additional guidance. And that's how we would anticipate their communication around what they should or should not be using for specific conversations.

Regarding internal communications in agencies, is there a specific preference in terms of what communication platforms are used, i.e., specific apps messaging platforms? Thank you for the question. Under the— under the current 2025 instant messaging policy, there's no difference between internal and external for instant messaging. But as it relates to platforms as a whole, we do provide guidance on which platforms are best used for specific types of business.

Is Signal one of those? We do not have Signal. Thank you for the question. We don't have Signal actually in any policy, maybe because the policies were in 2025. So, or that the latest update was in 2025. Our social media policy was updated in 2021. I don't know if Signal was around then. So mostly I would say that we do a lot of work to keep up to date with current practice.

And we We acknowledge that the work of digital archiving has to move with how technology is shifting over time. And we are doing lots of work to get to that. How often do you have— do you conduct a review of the social media policy? Thank you for that question. The social media policy was last updated in 2021.

And I unfortunately don't have any understanding of when it was I know there was a Department of Investigation request during that time for when it was evaluated. I'm not sure what prompted that or what came to that point, but we led to this policy that essentially puts social media at a place of permanence. And so everything that is put to social media is permanently retained, which means that we keep it forever.

Given how quickly tech seems to be moving these days, it might make sense to have a regularly occurring review of these social media apps and how they affect our government communication. Thank you for that feedback.

Councilmember Dinowitz and then Councilmember Wong. Thank you, Chair. I also do want to associate myself with the remarks of both the Public Advocate And the minority leader that it is, I mean, disappointing at best that the comms team who was invited is not in attendance, especially from an administration that is supposed to be defined by transparency. But I do want to ask about the instant messages.

You were discussing them as by nature transitory, brief messages. I'm reading something from Doris. And I just want to make sure I'm reading this correctly from 2024. It says instant electronic messages, and it defines substantive messages which document or relate to the decisions, actions, or policies of a city office or agency. And then it defines transitory messages which do not document or relate to the decisions, actions, or policies of an agency, such as personal messages between coworkers and time-dependent communications that are purely logistical, such as arranging a time or place for a meeting or call.

That's, that's correct. That's still correct and accurate. Thank you for that question. It may be that you're citing the instant messaging policy of 2024, and there was a 2025 update, but the language is similar to the current 2025 update. Okay. So you had said in the— or I think you had said in the testimony about a brief message is for the nature of instant messages.

And then, according to the Columbia report, which first documented this, it says via the encrypted messaging app Signal, messages receive— members receive daily updates, talking points, and clips to use in their points. Would you consider those to be brief or transitory messages, or would you consider those to be substantive messages? Thank you for that question. I would say that we— Doris is not charged with monitoring.

I'm asking what you think. You've created a policy. I'm not asking you to monitor it. I'm asking your opinion based on documents that you produce. Thank you for that question. So, the way that records management works is that it's based on the function, and it's not based on the format. And so, we really do not identify— I'm not asking about the format.

I'm asking about what's in the message. Would Doris consider daily updates, talking points, and clips to use in posts, substantive, which relate— which documents or relate to decisions, actions, or policies of a city officer agency, or would you consider that to be personal messages between co-workers, time-dependent communication regarding purely logistical matters? Thank you for the clarification of your question.

Sure. I would say that we see those points that you're— and you could list a whole list of things, right? I could give you a calendar. I could give you, you know, press releases, all of the things. And ultimately, these would be duplicative to the actual object. And so what we retain are the records themselves. And the communications about records are what would be transitory.

Can you say that in English, please? I didn't quite understand that. So, an example is if you create— thank you for that humor. If you create a document and you save it on your hard drive, or I don't know what we save things on, you save it in your OneDrive, and that's where it lives. And that would be the record, the document itself.

But if you have drafts of the document, if you have specific— I don't know, like there's moments where you're communicating between folks, but there is the physical object, and you want to say, send a link. Here's a link to the document that I just wrote. So, the link can be something that leads to the actual record, which is the document.

The record is the document, not the link. So, the actual— so, it doesn't matter. So, in essence, all text messages are transitory. So, your recommendation for me, if I don't ever want to be FOILed, is to put everything on my OneDrive and just send my communications with links over instant messaging, because by definition they would then be transitory.

Is that correct? Thank you for the question. I would never advise you to not want to be FOIA'd. We're here for transparency, and that's really important, and we believe in that in our work. But I would say that we recommend that agencies take the responsibility of considering how they would like their employees to use instant messaging if they're going to use instant messaging at all.

But I want to understand that if— And to provide guidance on that. I understand what you're saying your guidance is, but if a message has daily updates, talking points, and clips to use in posts, I'm just quoting an article here, I would read it as that's a substantive message. It has documents that relate to decisions, actions, or policies in the office or agency.

But what I'm hearing you say is, not really, because if you just include a link, it's— it doesn't really count. That's kind of what I'm hearing the official guidance to be from Doris. Thank you for that. And I will say the official guidance from Doris is in the policy, and the guidance does state in bold and underline that employees are strongly discouraged from creating electronic messages that are substantive in nature, and that it is the responsibility of the agency to understand I understand I'm out of time, but it seems like the team that was doing these instant messages didn't do their job properly.

That's how it seems based on your testimony. So I'll turn it back to the Chair, but I want to thank you all for coming and testifying today and for your answers to the questions. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Wong, and then Councilmember Murano. Thank you, Chair Brewer. And thank you to Speaker Menin for the opportunity to hold this hearing on this important issue and the bills before the committee today. Now, I counted. There are only like three empty seats in the room. There are sixty-four seats in the room. So this is a packed room.

So the people here, they are here today because this issue is important, right? And I'm glad. panelists are here because this is an important topic and the Charter expressly gives council committees the authority to require the attendance and testimony of the people necessary to an inquiry. And we're asking about today, very importantly, Signal. Signal and the person, Amelia Roland, the Director of New Media and Cultural Communications. appears to have all the answers, but she's not here.

So I have to ask the obvious. Where is Amelia Roland today? Does the panel know? Anybody know where she is? Thank you for the question, Councilmember. I do not have the answer to that question right now. Okay. And she has been publicly identified as the official overseeing the influencer operation and the Signal Group at the center of today's hearing.

So my first question to the Commissioner of LORIS, do you plan to archive Signal? Thank you for the question, Commissioner Wong. I mean, I'm sorry, Commissioner Wong, Councilmember Wong. I would say that what we would— if it were true that we were planning to archive Signal, it would be through the third-party platform that we use to archive social media.

And it would just— if there is the possibility, and if they were to adopt that platform, then it would fall into alignment with the other platforms that we do archive. But currently, there is no technological possibility to archive Signal as a platform, as a software. So, and the current policy for instant messaging does acknowledge that if it's instant messaging behavior regardless of platform, then we wouldn't retain those records within the archive specifically.

I have seen a memo, there's data on January, that's issued to all city employees that Signal was banned. No one could use it. Is that right? Are you aware of this memo? Thank you for that question. I'm not aware of a memo for banning Signal, but I do know that there are very many agency communications related to guidance for what folks should use when they are— It's dated January 15th from Chief Counsel Ramsey Kasim, and it specifically says do not use Signal.

So why are we seeing the mayor's office using it? Thank you for that clarification. The best that I can say is that city agencies ought to comply with the Doris policy, and That additional guidance from their own leadership ought to be something that they regard in their communications. But we do let everyone know, we provide access to the same policy to all city agencies, the same 2025 instant messaging policy.

All right. With Roland not here, and who exactly are we supposed to ask? This question for the panel. Who exactly are we supposed to ask about the creation, operation, and management of the Signal Group in question if the person identified as running it, nor the chief counsel who has direct oversight over these matters, will not appear before the committee?

Where can we get answers? Thank you for the question. I'm not entirely sure, but I would say potentially your contact in Intergovernmental Affairs could support getting you to someone who can answer your questions. It's unfortunate that we have a packed room and the person that has answers to the room is not here. I'll save my next set of questions for round 2, Chair.

Thank you.

Thank you very much. Councilmember Murano. Thank you, Chair, and thank you for being here. Chair Brewer and my colleague Councilmember Wong alluded to this, but I received this 3-page memorandum which I've asked the Sergeant-at-Arms to share with you from the Mayor's Office of the Chief Counsel. It's dated January 15th, 2022, but that's a typo from what I understand, and the metadata suggests it's from January of 2026.

The memorandum is titled Communication Requirements and Best Practices. On page 3, it states, and I quote, you should not use WhatsApp, Signal, or any other communications app or platform for work. This wasn't a casual suggestion. The memo specifically addresses document preservation, FOIL compliance, and cybersecurity. So I've asked that this document be entered into the record, and I want to ask a couple of questions about it.

Um, can you confirm, as best you understand, that this memorandum was issued by the Office of the Chief Counsel in January of 2026? Thank you for that question, Councilmember Murano. I can confirm that what you put in front of me is true. If it is, I wouldn't know. I wasn't around during that time, and we wouldn't— Doris would not receive memos to their staff because we don't fall within their jurisdiction.

So it seems like this would be a memo to the specific mayor's office employees. And We're not a part of that. So let me try to be more Doris-focused. Your testimony, Commissioner, says that substantive messages must be transferred to another format for preservation. So under Doris's policy, messages documenting or relating to government decisions, actions, or policies have to be retained.

Have you reviewed the Influencer Signal group to determine whether any substantive government records were deleted? Thank you for that question. And the answer is we don't monitor communications for our current government employees. Has anyone in city government conducted that review? Thank you for the question. I wouldn't know. If it were to happen, it wouldn't happen from the Doris end.

So who's responsible— again, not to repeat what my 2 colleagues were saying, but who specifically is responsible for determining whether records were lost And when will that determination be completed? Thank you for the question. I would say in relation to the 2025 policy on instant messaging, it is the responsibility of agencies to develop and disseminate policies related to use of these materials.

However, the retention of these materials, specifically Signal instant messaging, is not within policy for records management practice in the city currently. Commissioner, page 2 of your testimony says that the city's RecordPoint system manages more than 215 million records across 31 agencies, including the mayor's office. But you also say it only maps to government-supplied tools. Does that system automatically capture messages sent through Signal?

Thank you for that question. The RecordPoint electronic records management tool is robust, and it is able to coordinate alongside the categorization of records. And those categorizations are records that are managed through city government. So no, that we are vendors— that are vendors for us. So the answer is that it would not be able to retain Signal, and we aren't looking for it to, because, again, the instant messaging does not sit within a retention schedule of more than zero.

Right. Does Doris have any independent way to determine whether an employee has failed to transfer a substantive Signal message into an approved records system? Unfortunately— You didn't say thank you for the question? I was going to say— Okay. Thank you for that question. I do actually appreciate that. Thank you. Ooh, that was a good one in that you said substantive signal messages.

And I don't believe that I know that that— if a message is substantive, then it is up to the agent, the user, the person who's writing the message or receiving it for that matter, to transfer it to a different location. It isn't a Doris So is compliance effectively dependent on individual employees recognizing which messages must be preserved and transferring them themselves?

Thank you for that question. To be compliant with the 2025 instant messaging policy, a user ought to participate in the process of transferring instant messages that are substantive, if they exist. Uh, thank you, and, uh, thank you, Chair.

And I, I do hope, because there are so many folks that could be answering these questions that aren't here, that this committee and this council will consider using our subpoena power to force them to answer these questions, irrespective of whether we get a thank you for the question when those questions are proffered. Thank you. Thank you very much.

I totally agree that we're not getting the answers that this hearing was outlined for, but we sure asked those at communications and the mayor's office to be here. I have a question, then I'll call on Councilmember Wong for further second round.

So under the DARS rules, if we're trying to stay in the DARS rules, a city employee, as I understand it, needs to get approval to use the auto-delete feature on messaging apps. Now you could say we don't know if the Signal communication was deleted. We don't have that information. We don't know. But it is an auto-delete feature, Signal is.

So my question is, if that is the rule, number one, and second, did Amelia Rowland or anybody else who was doing communication with Signal get permission from Doris to use this auto-delete feature on the Signal app, or did they just get permission to use Signal in general? Because it seems to me that a city employee may not delete records without prior approval under DARS rules, which is slightly different than what you're stating.

Can you clarify this? Thank you for that question, Chair. The request for approval that you're referencing, I believe, came through a communication within an age— a specific agency and is not actually within the DORIS policy creation. So at the very minimum, city agencies need to— they're required to comply with the DORIS policy, but then of course city agencies may impose stricter policies within themselves.

So with respect to instant messaging platform, if that was an imposition within the agency, then I can't really speak to what they've chosen to determine there, because we don't have that within the instant messaging policy as it stands, a need for approval. So, there is no need for approval, is what you're saying? Thank you for that. The— What is— what need for approval?

The need for approval may exist within an agency, but not from DARS. But not from DARS, correct. Okay, but we don't know if agencies have an approval process. We don't know that. It would be up to the agency to have one or not have one. Absolutely true that if there is an approval process, I wouldn't know what their strategies are and how they communicate that.

There's a lot of new legislation to be needed in all of this, I think is what you're saying, without saying it, because you can't say it, but I can say it. All right. Because I was under the impression that Doris was given the approval.

Anyway, Councilmember Areola is on the Zoom and has a question. We do have a quorum, so she can ask it. Councilmember Areola? Thank you. Thank you so very much. Thank you, Chair. So all the questions that have been asked have been exactly what was in line with the questions I was going to ask. So I just want to say that there is a fine line between government agencies providing public and legitimate information and using taxpayer dollars to promote political propaganda.

Taxpayer-funded agencies have a responsibility to educate, inform, and provide essential services, and not to use the public resources to advance a political agenda, influence public opinion, or promote a particular ideology. Government communications should be factual, transparent, and directly connected to the agency's legitimate public purpose. And there should be someone overseeing this. There is a line that is crossed when the issue is bigger than politics.

It becomes a question of accountability, and from what I'm hearing today, there isn't very much accountability as to what is being disseminated through your outreach, outreach, organizing. You're using public dollars; they belong to the public. They should be used to serve the public and not promote political narratives. And I really do appreciate the time. Thank you so much.

Thank you very much, Councilmember Wong. And then Councilmember Murano. Thank you, Chair. My first question is back to Commissioner Sean Smith-Cruz of Department of Records. As I understand, we have encrypted messages here. And it seemed to me that how— there's no purpose of archiving them if you cannot read them. So how do you handle encrypted messages? And what's your policy?

Because why are we archiving messages that we cannot read? Thank you for that question. Where are you— can I just— Signal. Well, let's start with Signal. Oh, Signal. Okay. Or other— there are other social media platforms that support encryption. So my question is, how will you access these messages if they're encrypted? Thank you for that question. We do not access the messages, which is why there is a retention schedule of zero.

So there is no expectation to archive signal currently. And what about auto-deletion? Like, other social media platforms support that too. So what do you say about those records? That you cannot archive them? So if it's a social media platform, then the assumption there, and the way that we're distinguishing between instant messaging and social media, which is why we have the 2 separate policies, is that social media is meant to be— is considered a publication.

It's a thing that is posted. It is put out into the world already. So a government official or an agency is publishing their works. It's like a YouTube video or an Instagram post. If the software posts it, then it is published. And so the software is able to be captured and retained as a result of that process.

So it's technologically possible to do that for those— But are you publicizing— are you introducing corrective and recovery steps when these records may have been destroyed or deleted without authorization? Thank you for that question. In the social media platform, if it has been captured on its point of creation, then it actually doesn't matter if it's deleted in its current form. current state because it will have already been captured within the archiving social platform or software.

Yeah, because as I see it, if tax dollars are being paid for these social media platforms and they're exchanging messages involving official business, it is your job to retain them and make them— make the messages accessible to the public. Is that right? Thank you for that question. I want to continue to distinguish between the instant messaging feature of some of these softwares and platforms and the sort of publication feature of these softwares and platforms.

The instant messaging is transitory and is not being archived or retained. And the publication feature is being archived in permanence. And so we're keeping it forever. And how would the public access them, like today, right now? If the public would like to, they could go to Archive Social, and they could see what has been published across the various agencies around New York City, including City Council.

We really do encourage you to make sure that your social media is connected to Archive Social and Civic+. And if you're not sure how to do that, you can contact the Municipal Library to get connected. Okay, thank you.

A question to Commissioner Van Alken. Office of Mass Engagement, on use of creators. Does the OME or any office or program under its umbrella maintain the creator lists or communicate with influencers or recommend creators to agencies? Please answer that. Thank you for that question, Councilmember. As I mentioned earlier, our primary work at OME is to to talk to New Yorkers face-to-face through all the different avenues of work that we have.

On occasion, we have worked with the communications team to make sure that information about hearings or rights or services are being communicated to New Yorkers in as many ways as possible. It's very important to this administration that we are reaching New Yorkers in many different ways. But I would have to refer you to the comms team for specifics.

Okay. Does OME maintain creator lists, communicate with influencers? OME does not maintain creator lists. We have worked— we have coordinated with the comms team to work with creators on occasions, but you would have to refer to the comms team for details beyond that. Has the OME issued any citywide standards for creator-based engagements? Thank you for that question.

I— no, I don't believe so, but we can get back to you with details.

Thank you, Chair. Thank you very much. Councilmember Murano. Thank you. Very briefly, Commissioner, your testimony describes records management policies, employee training, and technological systems. We also have a written policy telling employees not to use Signal, which we alluded to earlier, followed by an acknowledged incident involving disappearing messages. What additional safeguards, if any, would Doris need to ensure substantive government communications are preserved, whether it's legislation, whether it's policy guidance.

What else would you need? Thank you for that question. We definitely enjoy these points of advocacy that come up from City Council. It's very helpful to maintaining our request for agencies to communicate with their employees related to what they should be doing for their records. So truly, it's broadening understanding and ensuring that you too are preserving your own records and submitting it to its proper channels.

I know that the City Council, for example, has its archives at the LaGuardia Archives, which we were able to visit and get a tour of, and they have a new director. And we've talked to them about the memorandum of understanding related to City Council and Doris's archival records. And so the best way we can support the work of archiving the city is to have a sense of how our own records are being archived and maintained. and hopping on board to the records management platform that allows us to do this work.

Would a requirement that agencies document exceptions and verify preservation settings address a gap in the current system, or can you already require that under existing authority? Thank you for the question. You're at— and just to clarify, a requirement to verify— can you repeat it? A requirement that agencies document exceptions and verify preservation settings in, say, a WhatsApp group?

Or I don't know how Signal works, but presumably there's something similar in Signal. I see. Thank you for that distinction. As it relates to— thank you for the question as well. As it relates to the social media platforms, that is not what RecordPoint is capturing. And so we set the parameters for the records management platform that we are supporting agencies to onboard into.

And that is for government-supported software. As it relates to the social media, then, the vendor is the one setting up the ability to scrape those platforms. And so, it really is not— it's a very easy and foolproof method. They just connect their account, and they're already being archived if they have a social media archive social account. Unfortunately, as of now, there really is no way for us to capture what takes place in specific platforms because the technology just doesn't exist.

And so in some future moment, maybe it will exist and we'll continue to advance. But as of now, the policy is set because of the limitation of technology as well as the likelihood that these messages are transitory and not really worth the government resources to retain in perpetuity the way that other material is eligible for.

And for Commissioner Van Auken, Your office, and the Office of Mass Engagement, is supposed to bring government closer to New Yorkers. Can you provide a borough-by-borough breakdown of your outreach spending, staffing, community events, and completed service referrals? In particular, I'm interested in what percentage has been directed to Staten Island, and how are you measuring whether residents are actually receiving help?

Staten Island usually gets the short end of the stick. We have a Staten Island community liaison. Thank you for that question. Some of the specifics I can't speak to now, and I can get back to you, but I want to pass it over to First Deputy Commissioner Singh to talk about some of the work we've done across the city.

Thank you so much, Councilmember. As the Commissioner had As I stated, we take our responsibility to outreach and engage with all New Yorkers, no matter which borough they are in, very seriously. We have a Staten Island District Manager who is often on the island ensuring they are reaching out to various community-based organizations, faith-based organizations. Just recently, they worked with our Emergency Response and Recovery Team around flooding and hurricane outreach to ensure that many of the faith and community organizations were aware of the flood zones that they live in and what are the options and availabilities available to them.

They represented our office at the recent Postcards Memorial as well, which we make sure as an office we are turning out every year, and we continue to do great work on the borough. Yeah, if you could get me the borough-by-borough breakdown of spending, staffing, etc., I'd appreciate it. Hopefully I'll see the liaison at tonight's community board meeting.

Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. A couple questions. The Office of Mass Engagement's budget is about $2.8 million for 20 new staff lines. Can you tell us what those newly created positions are, what units they're in, what's filled and what's not filled? Thank you for the excellent question, Chair. We— I'm going to have to get back to you with some of the details.

I did not come with all of those details, so I'm very happy to follow up with the details around specific staffing. We, as I mentioned earlier, our work overall includes a lot of the historical work that happened before us. We continue all of that work. And we have added new work to create new pathways for new employees.

So the 20— there are 20 new staff lines? Can you answer that? Yes. Yes, there are 20 new staff lines? I believe so, but I will get back to you with the specific numbers. But you don't know. Okay. Another question then. This is probably the end at this point. What point is something considered to be related to the decisions, actions, or policies of a city agency?

Is a text stating that an agency is agreeing to a contract, that seems to me kind of important, count as a decision or anything else? We're lost in this morass, to be honest with you, of what is substantive, what is not, what— it's very fuzzy. Thank you for that question and that example. I would say that— The way to approach that question is to imagine what takes place in relation to a transitory message, which one would imagine is substantive business.

And so that's it. There are transitory messages and platforms that are transitory. And then there is substantive business and other platforms. And we have to sort of— I was going to say Public Advocate Williams talked about trust in his testimony. That I think trust is part of what this is about, and I would love us to consider the work of the city employee and ensure that they are being equipped with the tools that they need to make those distinctions and to move city business to city business platforms.

I hear you. I mean, I have to say, probably the mayor's office— any mayor doesn't follow all the rules, I'm just saying. And it's harder because they're not an agency in the same traditional way. Lots of work to be done.

This panel is excused. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you very much. The next will be CFB, will be the next panel. Go ahead when you're ready. Thank you. All right. Do I have to be sworn in? Yes. Okay. Sworn. Okay. Please raise your right hand. Yes. Do you affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, and to answer councilmember questions honestly before this I do.

All right. Thank you. You may begin when ready. Great.

Good afternoon, I believe. Good afternoon, Chair Brewer and members of the Committee on Governmental Operations, State and Federal Legislation. I am Amanda Melillo, First Deputy Executive Director of the New York City Campaign Finance Board. Thank you for the opportunity to testify today. The CFB is a nonpartisan, independent city agency committed to strengthening our local democracy. We combat the influence of big money in politics by amplifying the power of small-dollar contributions from everyday New Yorkers through our matching funds program, which serves as a model nationwide.

Through our NYC Votes initiative, we engage directly with voters and provide access to the information and resources they need to vote. One way we do this is by partnering with social media influencers to share public service announcements about voting. This approach is especially effective at reaching people who aren't normally tuned into government and politics. In 2021, the CFPB began working with influencers through our advertising vendor at the time.

And in 2023, we brought the work of identifying, researching, and selecting influencers in-house to our social media team. Over this time, we have built a trusted messenger program that partners with voices who can reach younger voters in ways traditional government outreach often does not. This strategic engagement is driven by our city charter mandate to prioritize communities, both demographic and geographic, that are underrepresented in the electoral process.

These priority audiences include younger voters under age 30, voters who primarily speak a language other than English, voters with disabilities, and voters who have been impacted by the criminal legal system. We also focus outreach on neighborhoods in the South Bronx, South Brooklyn, Northern Queens, and Central Queens that have lower voter turnout and a higher concentration of these priority audiences.

Our work with influencers reflects the CFPB's broader commitment to reaching and engaging these audiences and communities. We take our position as a nonpartisan agency seriously. The CFPB uses clear criteria to select influencers based on their audience, Each must be a New York City resident with a majority audience in the 5 boroughs, and we prioritize influencers who can reach our priority audiences.

Our internal nonpartisanship policy requires that all contracts include a nonpartisanship clause and an agreement not to endorse or oppose candidates starting from the date they begin working with the CFPB until 90 days after the general election. These guardrails enable the agency to avoid working with influencers who have expressed opinions on candidates or taken positions on political parties, ballot proposals, or contentious partisan issues.

In 2025, the CFPB worked with 29 influencers over the election cycle who generated over 70 posts across Instagram and TikTok at a total cost of $626,365. Compensation varies based on the campaign's strategic priority, the influencer's audience size and reach, and production complexity and creativity. These posts produced more than 6 million views and over 500,000 engagements, with an average engagement rate of about 5%, well above the 1 to 3% industry average.

Every like, comment, and share signals a viewer engaging with a civic message and amplifies that content to be more visible to others. The effect was even stronger for non-English content. Influencer videos in Spanish, Mandarin, Korean, and Bengali created in language by voices based in the communities we aim to reach outperformed English language posts, generating over 2.3 million views and more than 4,000 visits to our NYC Votes website.

These are audiences that have historically lacked civic engagement and election messaging in their own language. Our ability to engage through trusted messenger influencers in language allows us to get them the information they need to be informed voters.

Turning to the bills before the committee today, I want to note that the CFPB has had one week to review the proposed 4 pieces of legislation, so our feedback at this stage is preliminary, and we look forward to providing more detailed comments and suggested edits to the Council after conducting a more detailed analysis of the impact on CFPB operations.

However, from initial review, several of these bills raise serious concerns and as currently drafted would have unintended negative consequences for the agency's work. The first bill I will discuss is T2026-2553, introduced by Councilmember Wong, which would codify paid-for-by disclaimer requirements on online and digital campaign expenditures. CFB Rule 6-06 has required these on all campaign advertising since the 2017 election cycle and was expanded in 2024 to cover additional communication types, including paid influencer content.

Such expenditures are already disclosed and documented like any other campaign advertising spending. Rule 14-04 similarly requires disclaimers on covered communications by independent spenders in visual, video, or audio formats. This legislation appears to duplicate the existing disclaimer requirements without changing the current obligations of campaigns, and we don't believe these changes are necessary to the charter. T2026-2555, introduced by Councilmember Carr, would prohibit candidates for office from appearing in certain digital or online government-funded public communication during the 90 days preceding an election.

The CFPB already enforces the existing part of this law, which prohibits using governmental resources for mass mailings during this period. This bill would simply broaden the scope of communication types required under this law. We have no substantive feedback at this time and have no formal position on this bill. T2026-1440, sponsored by Councilmember Carr, would require public servants to report spending on public communications paid for with government resources.

As drafted, the reporting obligation falls on the individual public servant who authorizes the use of government funds, which could unnecessarily disperse responsibilities across an agency and lead to duplicative or missed reports. We believe agency-level reporting through existing advertising spending reporting would better achieve this goal while consolidating reporting obligations. communications. Given these concerns, the CFPB does not support the bill as currently drafted, but we welcome further discussion with the Council to share our perspectives as an agency that funds public communications.

Lastly, T.2026-2554, introduced by Councilmember Feliz, would require government agencies to disclose their partnerships on certain third-party public communications. As currently drafted, the bill raises fundamental concerns that prevent the CFPB from supporting it. Designating the CFPB as an enforcing agency is misaligned with our current charter role— our existing role and charter mandate. The CFPB does not investigate or regulate other city agencies.

The proposed shared enforcement structure with the Conflicts of Interest Board compounds this problem. Dividing responsibility between 2 agencies would create unnecessary complexity in rulemaking, enforcement procedures, and administration, potentially producing inconsistent standards and undermining effective enforcement. Without significant changes to the proposed enforcement structure, the CFPB cannot support this legislation. In conclusion, we strongly believe the CFPB's Influencer Program is an effective tool for reaching voters whom traditional outreach methods do not effectively engage, backed by strong safeguards to protect the agency's nonpartisan citizenship.

The CFPB also approaches this issue as the regulator responsible for advising campaigns on their disclosure obligations and enforcing their misuse, and we are committed to providing clear guidance that reflects our existing disclosure requirements. The agency is prepared to share its operational and regulatory expertise as the council considers these issues. We remain committed to strengthening our local democracy, and we look forward to working together to ensure New Yorkers receive transparent information about political content, no matter how the content reaches them.

And I welcome your questions.

Thank you very much. Just a few. How do you decide which influencers you want to work with? What is the difference between campaigns you create with these influencers and those created for traditional media? And then also, I think you have said that you have brought your influencer campaign in-house? I didn't know what that meant. Those are my 3 questions.

Sure. I'm going to actually step back and answer the second one first. So when we're thinking about reaching younger voters, what traditional advertising generally looks like is some sort of branded campaign asset that is professionally designed. It usually has a field-tested message attached to it, a call to action. And you can generally tell what these advertisements look like pretty clearly in the subways or whenever you're seeing it out in the world.

I think what research has pretty consistently shown, especially for younger people who are just— have been incessantly targeted by ads from the time they were children, is that they are increasingly suspicious of traditional advertising and prefer content that feels more authentic to them. So this is why you've really seen the rise of influencer partnerships. Partnerships and advertising because in these sorts of short-form content, influencers are creating posts or making videos, or it's really just someone talking to a camera or maybe posting some words, and it seems like it's coming from a person as opposed to an organization.

So I would say a number of agencies, not just the Campaign Finance Board, have been experimenting more with this type of— these types of ways to reach voters. especially over the past 5 to 6 years, as a lot more of our work has sort of migrated online as these generational changes occur. So, when we are going out, and what I mean by when I said we brought that work in-house, before we were paying an advertising agency, which was at the time Miller Advertising, we aren't currently working with them, and they sort of went out and identified some potential influencers. influencers.

We have a social media manager in-house, as many government agencies do, and our social media manager actually began doing the work as someone who is much more online as I am, I admit. She began doing the work of really looking at who are New York City-based influencers that don't make content that's political in nature, but it's very New York City specific.

So We have, you know, we've partnered with outlets such as Public Opinion who does like man-on-the-street style interviews. We've partnered with the influencer behind Righteous Eats who like profiles mom-and-pop shops and eateries around especially the outer boroughs. People who aren't necessarily creating content that is political in nature or even civically engaged but have an interest in the outcomes of New York City.

So generally, that is like our first cut of who are New York City content creators who live in the 5 boroughs and their audiences are in the 5 boroughs. And then from there, we start to winnow down. Our social media team will sort of do a review of what are the types of things that they've posted. Do we think that this would be an appropriate content creator for the Campaign Finance Board to partner with?

Have they posted political content in the past that could be seen as partisan in a way we don't necessarily want to be associated with. You know, sometimes there are content creators, depending on what they do, maybe they've posted things that aren't suitable for work. Maybe we shouldn't partner with them as a government agency. But for the most part, we will sort of come up with a shortlist and then go from there and set— and then ask ourselves, Is anyone on this list, or do we need to find additional people who are reaching out to our priority audiences, especially in-language audiences or people that are harder to reach?

And do you use certain language, hashtags, or whatever for disclosure? So maybe that's something other agencies should pay more attention to. How do you determine that? Yes. One of the things we've been discussing internally as a result of this hearing, because right now we follow the practices required by each of the platforms. They all have slightly different rules depending, and especially for political advertising, there's like a verification process that everyone has to go through.

So we go through that. But one of the things I think we're currently looking at is, are our disclosure standards meeting the same standards as like a paid-for-by notice? Because I think that we could probably be more consistent at using those. As someone who I tend to see a lot of this content, both before it goes out and organically and non-organically, it's generally pretty clear when we've partnered with a content creator.

But I think this is just a good opportunity for us to sort of do a review and make sure it's as clear as possible. Thank you.

Councilmember Wong? Thank you, Chair. I just wanted to tell you the spirit of my bill. Of course. See, traditional reporters, they come to City Hall, they talk, they ask questions, tough questions. Yes. Like even to me or to the mayor, to the public advocate, and we get challenged. And that's the way it works with traditional media. And they do not simply take the City Hall talking points and repeat them.

And it appears to me that's what the influencers are doing. And that's not— that's to me, that's not news. That's propaganda. So the spirit of my bill is that when the public sees these messages, they have the right to know this is paid for, paid by our tax dollars, even though it's not— no one's running a campaign.

If the mayor is doing this or if I'm doing this right now, you know, We're not running a campaign, but the public has to know.

So my question to you is, you seem to say that this is already covered by existing laws of Campaign Finance Board, but I don't see it that is being covered, that covers influencers. Can you, can you talk about that? And then I'll lead to my part 2 of my question. Yes, let me draw a distinction between 2 separate parts of the charter, because what your bill would modify And that's T2026-2553.

What that would modify is the elections part of the charter, specific to elections. Mm-hmm. So what that would not cover is what City Hall is doing with influencers that is at issue for the hearing today. The other 3 pieces of legislation being considered would modify a different section of the charter, which is about public officials' use of resources, and that's where you find the 90-day mailing blackout provision that elected officials must follow before an election.

So, when we're saying, and it's not that we disagree with the spirit or the intent of your bill, we're just saying it's already covered in our rules, and we don't necessarily feel like the charter has to be amended to reflect it, because it is covered in our rules. And I will just state this very quickly as, like, a matter of something we always consider when we are thinking about what needs to go in the charter, or the admin code, or in the CFPB rules.

Generally, I think it is okay to direct the CFPB to do things at a high level, but not get super specific about the way technology works, because it changes so quickly. So the way this would regulate paid-for buy notices which is the way our rule currently— our rules currently regulate it, that could become a very stale piece of the charter if something about the social media platforms were to change.

So for example, there's a requirement for paid for by notifications in the comments section. What if Instagram removed comments or the ability to add comments to posts? Then we would have to think about what is a different sort of disclosure regime that we would advise campaigns, but that section of the charter would become out of date. So generally, we like to align on the intent of things and then have these conversations about where, where we think it should go and what the CFPB should be directed to do.

Yes, and as I see it, it's becoming— there's a very blurry line now between propaganda and news, and it seems to me that the public is perceiving it that way, and that concerns me. especially with the use of AI graphics, the videos of a mass crowd, you know, listening in to somebody making an announcement in public, you know.

So those are concerning and those are misleading and they can be abused. So the spirit of my bill is to clearly identify these messages that are created by influencers or they're subcontractors of some PR firm hired by, by the administration, you know, that, that the public needs to know that is one, is like AI created, or two, is paid for out of tax dollars, right?

So that's where I'm coming from. Now what you're saying that this is already covered, but I don't see these, these disclaimers in, in, in, in social media videos that, that's used by, by pretty much everybody and not just the mayor's office. So, uh, um, are we dealing with an enforcement problem or we're dealing with gaps that we have— we are addressing.

I will answer this as an example. The Campaign Finance Board regulates the mayor's campaign and his activities on his campaign for office. We do not regulate the mayor's activities or the activities of any City Hall staffer in carrying out their public duties. So this bill would actually not regulate the content of what City Hall is doing right now.

It would regulate what campaigns are doing. So what you're telling me is that once the campaign is over, these propaganda videos are not governed by the Campaign Finance Board. Is that right? Yes, that is correct. If it were— if these videos were created as a result of the campaign, so if the campaign had paid an influencer to create videos on the campaign's behalf, that would be regulated campaign spending.

But once it's no longer associated with the campaign, it becomes something that we don't have regulatory oversight over. Okay. Thank you for making that clarification. Thank you, Chair.

Thank you very much for you, and you are dismissed. And we look forward to working with CFPB always. Excellent. Dr. Anya Schiffman, who is the author of the Columbia Journalism Review, the article that is of much discussion and Respected. So this is part of the public testimony. That's what we're opening now, and I remind members of the public this is a government proceeding.

Decorum shall be reserved. You will remain silent at all times. The witness table is for people who wish to. testify. No video recording or photography is allowed. Members of the public may not present audio or video recordings as testimony, but may submit transcripts of such recordings to the sergeant if you want to. If you want to speak, make sure you fill out an appearance card with the sergeant and be recognized, and you'll have 3 minutes to talk on today's hearing topic.

But I'm sure the doctor can have some more time. All right, thank you very much. Thank you. And if you have a written statement or additional, you can submit it to the sergeant-at-arms. You also can send written testimony to testimony@council.nyc.gov within 72 hours of the close, not audio and video. And anybody who's got a— it's in person, you'll come up to the table when you're called, and we will call those from Zoom if they are there.

And please go ahead. And thank you for being here, and congratulations on your article. Thank you. Thank you very much.

This is my first hearing ever in my life, so I just want to make sure I understand. I have written testimony. I was not expecting to answer questions. Is there time for me to do both, read my written testimony and answer questions? Yes, I have a long, long list of questions for you here, so go right ahead.

Okay, here we go.

Thank you so much for the opportunity to submit written testimony about my forthcoming paper, Mapping New York City Influencers and the funding of public messaging. A working paper version, which is 11,000 words, is already available online. I am Dr. Anya Shifrin, senior lecturer in discipline at Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs, and I'm the author of this working paper.

The final version will be published as a policy brief by the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University. We're having an event on October 19th to launch the paper. I think it will be open to the public. I've devoted much of my academic career to the study of information ecosystems. I have long been preoccupied with questions about how citizens can receive quality information and what the obstacles are to receiving that information.

I've edited 3 volumes on media capture. I've written a PhD dissertation on policies to address mis- and disinformation. Information. I've studied government policies to support journalism, and I've made recommendations on how government and philanthropy can support the provision of quality information while respecting editorial independence and press freedom. Over the years, I've organized many conferences bringing together government officials from all over the world with philanthropists, and I do believe that on the subject that we're tackling today, there is a huge amount that can be learned from Canada, from the European Union, and from other countries.

And at the end of my testimony, I have 2 pages of comparative policies. So I think there's a lot that we can be talking about apart from the Signal Group. Anyway, because of my concern about information and public information, I decided to spend the summer researching influencers who provide information to New Yorkers about city services, laws, and policies.

As we know well in the communications field, it's not enough for governments to pass laws and implement policies. It's necessary to communicate those policies to citizens. And this task has gotten ever harder in a world of AI slop, information overload, and fragmented habits of news consumption. I note in my paper that government agencies have long tried to provide trusted information to citizens about the services that governments provide.

In France, Canada, and the US, social media influencers are sometimes paid to disseminate information about healthcare, voting, climate change, and to reach young audiences. I also talked about the pandemic when health and hospitals began using influencers to remind people to get tested and then to get vaccines when they were available. The MTA has used celebrities to record public announcements about the subways.

And we just heard from the Campaign Finance Board about some of their efforts. I'm happy to talk about my research project. The Campaign Finance Board were the only agency using influencers that was willing to give me extensive on-the-record discussion. And I really appreciated the comments made by the previous— Thank you. Person. The sanitation department hired a marketing firm, Karen Pace, to work with New York Nico as part of its campaign to remind New Yorkers not to litter.

They received a grant, the sanitation department, to spread the word about composting. And since Mamdani's taken office, there started to be pilot programs aimed at using influencers on Instagram and TikTok to promote city services such as pre-K, public budgeting processes, which we talked about earlier, and tenants' rights, which also came up. And the mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs recently announced new information campaign that will include content creators and influencers.

Where I think it's important to take a real close look is the City of New York works with a group of advertising and marketing agencies that place advertisements on behalf of city agencies and manage influencer relationships under the citywide media placement contracts. This relationship management can include identifying and hiring influencers, issuing contracts and payments, working with the influencers on the content they deliver, and monitoring the impact of that content.

Some information is available in city documents online, but in general, there's quite a bit of secrecy regarding the hiring and payment of these messengers. There is no systemic record keeping that we could find of the content creators hired by city agencies. And we found that, just as we saw today, that many of the regulations governing influence relationships are unknown and unclear.

We found a lack of standards as to disclosure and transparency, and a lack of knowledge about what laws, if any, apply. And this, by the way, seems to be a universal problem. When the EU did a sweep of influencers a couple years ago, I cite that in my paper, they also found that mostly people didn't know what the laws were and were not following the disclosure law.

So this is not just us. We mentioned in our paper that we also found that labeling of the paid influencer content seems to be inconsistent. We note in the paper some of the different hashtags we saw, and we note countries like Spain basically have very clear rule. It has to say paid for, can't say partner, can't say collab, has to be visible throughout the video.

So I think there's work that can be done on strengthening disclosure and transparency of this paid work. And then as we were— during the course of our research, and I'll say, by the way, that I was working with Wyatt, who's an undergrad at Columbia College, and he was the chief researcher. I had a couple of other students helping.

I thought when I was starting the paper that I would be really writing about a comparative look at regulation. And then what I found was that there was so little information available about what was happening in New York that actually my contribution to the field would be simply trying to map. So we have parts that we haven't published yet because we haven't, you know, we're not sure how accurate they are.

But we tried to pull out from the budget records different information about the different contracts. We included a sidebar on who the agencies are. And we have pulled together a list of more than 200 influencers, but we're not yet happy enough about it to release it. So we do have a lot of stuff that still feels a little rough to us.

And I'm so much hoping that now that these hearings are happening, that perhaps more information will be forthcoming from the city. And like you, you know, I need to finish this paper. It's got to get published and presented in the middle of October. So anybody who who can talk to us and provide more information, we would be very grateful.

And it goes without saying that we'd be really delighted to help with the drafting of legislation focusing on disclosure and transparency and connecting you to officials around the world who have already done this kind of work. There's a lot out there. So that's something I wanted to say.

And then, yeah, so we sort of stumbled on the Signal Group. And we weren't— we were very interested interested in the communications field, we talk a lot about boundary work. What's different about a journalist from an influencer? And so I was really trying to understand the sort of contours of what this Signal group actually was. You know, it has characteristics of a press list, but in other ways it seems very different.

It seems that this group is not paid. They were very clear about that from Amelia Rowland's office. And there's been, I would say, There's 3 things that I find sort of important or concerning about this group. So I think we focused a lot today on the need for record retention. So clearly I won't say anything else. I would say that there's sort of a lack of clarity as to the precise function of the unpaid influencers.

And, you know, is the relationship between City Hall and influencers a sort of standard journalist press relationship? To get a City Hall press pass, you need to fill out a lot of forms. You need to demonstrate that you're covering— what exactly is the intake process? And then a third question. My previous life, when I was a journalist, I wrote quite a bit about Regulation FD, which was issued by the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2000.

And that required that material information be made public. to all relevant parties at the same time and not given in advance to favored analysts or investors. And as I recall, the Wall Street Journal was actually against that law because they like getting things first. So I'm— one of the things I've been puzzling over is why would there be a need for a separate signal group as opposed to a press list?

So I'm very interested in that question. Why wouldn't you just have one list for everybody and have a kind of you know, a process for everybody to join it. So that's one of the research questions that has remained unanswered. I sent dozens of emails to different parts of City Hall and to city agencies since July asking for information.

When I did my PhD on disinformation, Google and Facebook didn't speak to me once in the years I was doing my research, but every single official or government employee that I wrote to at the EU Commission or the EU Parliament met with me for at least an hour. So I'm very used to engaging with government officials as part of my academic research.

And I was a little surprised when I didn't get an answer from anybody at all. So after the paper came out, I did get a text message from Emilia Rowland. And, you know, resent many of the questions I'd been sending since July. So on Saturday, she sent me a text message about this particular question in which she said that the information in the Signal group is not different at all from the information given to the regular press list.

Quote, it is usually just a link to a press release and link to the announcement livestream on YouTube, Rowland said in a text message on September September 21st, but I'm looking forward to further clarification. And then I just also note that City Hall's use of a signal group to reach content creators is part of a broader trend.

In August, journalists revealed that the Pentagon had hired conservative military influencers apparently to amplify messages of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. January 11th article in the Wall Street Journal talked about corporate and foreign interests working with influencers to push their agendas. One example cited in the article is the government of Qatar giving free trips to Doha and perks to a group of pro-Trump influencers, and also planned spending of $900,000 by Israel.

I don't know if that's government or who in Israel, and direct payments to influencers from companies in the solar and health industries. So, um, this is part, part of a larger trend, which I think is why regulation is so important. And, you know, at least our mayor is not ripping up federal documents and putting them in the toilet when we talk about record retention.

So, you know, that's something. So I do think that all the media coverage about the use of influencers to promote political agendas or candidates— Ken Bensinger has done a terrific job at the New York Times. You know, I was fortunate enough to talk to Emma Goldberg while I was after I'd written my first paper. And all of this coverage has really raised questions about what kind of regulations are needed.

And so a lot of what I'm seeing globally is disclosure and labeling of influencer content. And that has begun to attract the attention of regulators in the US and overseas. I think that there's, given the amount of online violence and physical threats in the real world to journalists and influencers. I think that there's a fear of naming who the influencers are, for example, in the Signal group.

But I think we need to weigh that against the pollution of the information ecosystem and the mistrust created when audiences are not aware of the alliances or the agendas of the people that they encounter online.

I have great hope that New York could really be a standard setter for a lot of this. I think there's no reason we couldn't do sort of world first or standard setting in terms of research. I mean, in terms of regulation. So some of the recommendations I made, and I'm very open to revising them if it turns out we don't need them or we already have them, but I would argue for a clear disclosure of relationships.

With influencers, ideally applying to both paid and unpaid content. I think standardized disclosure, as just came up, and I was very glad to hear the Campaign Finance Board is thinking about that. So consistent use of hashtags maybe at the top of the videos, remain throughout the video, be visible at all times. And it should be clear, you know, again, what Spain has done of labeling things, you know, paid partnership as opposed to collaboration.

And again, some sort of label or disclosure for unpaid but persistent relationships that should also be visible. I certainly think that some kind of regular publication of lists of influencers who work with the city agencies and explain what this consists of. As I mentioned, it seems to all go through marketing agencies that don't seem to provide information or answer questions.

And another time I hope we can talk about city advertising. Because, again, Canada, Sweden, UK, there are many countries that have very strong guidelines on city advertising. And I would love us to maybe look at that as well. I also think that the mayor's office should probably publicize the disclosure rules far more completely and provide in-house training for city employees, vendors, and marketing agencies that work with influencers, as well as training for influencers, agency staff, employees working with influencers, and vending and marketing firms.

I think it's very important, especially for new hires. When you have a new administration, you may have people coming in who don't know the rules, so have to kind of make sure they're clear. Maybe the mayor's office could create a sort of influencer hub the same way the EU has done, and the FTC pages are actually very helpful.

They provide clearly written information and ethical guidelines regarding content and information on regulations that cover influencers and best practices. And then I have this table of the US regulatory landscape and some of the European regulations. As I mentioned, I'm still working on this, so I'm very open for more information, very happy to bring experts together, convene, and keep discussing all of this.

Thank you very much. Just a couple of questions. When you're talking about England or EU or any of those other— Canada— are they also using a signal or other type of communication, do you know, or is it done differently? So the research that I was doing, I mean, the signal group was sort of an accidental finding for me.

The research that I was doing was actually especially on influencers who are promoting information about government programs. And what's so interesting about some of this, I was just looking at Canada, you know, one of the debates is do the influencers need to be paid in order to disclose— to be told to disclose? So I think that would be a real question for us, you know, is what is our bar?

Is it number of followers? Is it how often you're posting? Is it how much money you're making? Is it whether you're getting a gift or a trip? Is it, you know, the actual content of the message? So I think all of those will need to be sort of considered when you think about regulation. Okay. What do you mean by disclosures of persistent relationships?

What does that mean to you? So again, as I mentioned, you know, journalists that cover City Hall have a press pass which they apply for. So if there are groups of people that are getting information on a regular basis and then reporting out that information, are they like a journalist? Do we need to then think about some sort of— you know, traditionally in this country, um, press freedom groups, newspapers, the profession has been very much against licensing, whereas in Europe you would have rules about, you know, did you go to this journalism school, how much training have you had, then you can get a press pass.

That has not been the American way. But I think I think as someone mentioned earlier, you know, this is new forms of communication, and so clearly regulation hasn't caught up. So I think these are all things we can really think about.

Okay, thank you, Chair. Um, my question is access. Like, traditional media, uh, seem to me that they're getting the different set of, uh, press statements from, say, from the mayor's office, while the influencers getting a separate set of, uh, info feeds from, uh, Emilia Roland. Yeah. So it seemed to me, uh, they don't have equal access. And some— I even heard that, uh, uh, the influencers got hold of information way before the, uh, the, uh, um, traditional reporters did.

So my question is, should they have equal access if there's any activity coming from the media, from the mayor's office? And why are they not getting the same access? Yes, well, I think you raise a very important point. And in academia, we would call this anecdata. We don't have a full picture of what's going on. We have anecdotes that are certainly concerning.

I think it was by Hammad in a text message, that there are more briefings for journalists than there are for influencers. And I was just told Saturday by Amelia in a text message that basically the influencers are given press— the same press releases as journalists. So I think this would be an area for further study and clarification.

Yeah.

And before coming to this hearing, I'm watching the videos. of the mayor promoting a ballot issue on these ballot proposals. And that is to me not news that you're promoting politics. You're telling voters about an issue they will be voting on in November. And that should clearly be indicated that that is a political message. And it should clearly say it should be paid by the tax dollars of New York City.

And then what— what I— and I don't think so many influencers work for free. So it seemed to me that with so many of them out there, you know, somebody's getting paid and we're watching these propagandas and it's hard to distinguish them from news. Yeah. Thank you for that comment. I mean, I think that The position of Amelia Rowland is that none of those influencers on the Signal group are getting paid for being on that Signal group.

You know, whether some of them at some times are wearing other hats and perhaps getting that $5,000 contract with a city agency needs clarification. I know that everybody's been sitting here for hours. You don't really need to listen to an academic drone on, but we did a report for the government of Bhutan years ago about advertising in newspapers.

And we studied, I think it was 6 different countries to look at their regulations. And there are exactly what you're saying, a lot of guidelines about, you know, when can images appear of the mayor, when can they back certain things, how close to an election should they be making a statement, how do you make sure that you're actually giving people information like, you know, enroll your kid in kindergarten versus sort of— sort of say, hey, we're doing a great job, vote for us.

So I think that— sorry, as an academic, I think we have to have a separate conversation about those regulations and guidelines because it's complex and there's a lot of examples around the world. I just want to say, having done this for many years, those are usually in New York City very well articulated, to be honest with you.

However, they're not always enforced. So there is that. We heard earlier that from the agencies that many of the bills are good, but they already exist. We don't have, in my opinion, that's my opinion, not a great enforcement. Particularly on these ballot questions. I can go on and on about what you are or not supposed to do at different times.

Oversight is tough. Any more? Quickly. Again, the public may not be sophisticated, able to distinguish, oh, that is a message reminding me to take flu shots or from that is political propaganda telling me about these ballot proposals in November, hinting at which way I should vote. You know, so I think that distinction has to be defined and has to be clearly specified that it's paid for by the tax dollars, taxpayers of New York City.

And right now it doesn't look like it. Okay. And as we approach Election Day, I think we'll be seeing more and more of these videos. And that, that is dangerous. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you very much. We look forward to continuing to work with you.

The next panel is Rachel Pfau, Susan Lerner, and Grace Rao. Thank you very much. And if Ben wants to come up also, is that what you're doing? That's fine. You can come up, Ben. You're always up. Go ahead, whoever wants to start. Do you mind? Okay.

Good afternoon. Thanks for the opportunity to testify. My name is Rachel Foss. I'm the senior policy advisor for Reinvent Albany. We advocate for transparent and accountable government in New York. I'm going to just run through our basic recommendations, and I might spend a little more time on the records issue. So first, we ask the council to pass legislation clarifying that all electronic communications that results in the creation of a public record including instant messages, be archived and easily retrievable by agency FOIL officers.

I'll talk a little bit more about the draft bill we put together. Second, moving— the council should move forward with a new influencer disclosure bill modeled after current FTC rules, and this should be done through the city contracting process rather than some of the means outlined in the legislation today. We ask the council to revise T2026-2555, that's the blackout period bill, and T2026-1440, the third-party communication reporting, to incorporate the perspectives of the experts here today.

And then we ask the Council not to move forward with 2445 and 2— I'm sorry, 2554 and 2553 because of some of the concerns the CFPB raised. On the records retention issue, I think the bill we've put together would answer a lot of the questions that you had, Gail, in particular about transitory. The Doris policy talks about transitory as— it's almost presupposing that an instant message would never be a record, and we think that's a bit backwards.

I would suggest we define instant messages as substantive and non-substantive and take transitory out of it, Because in reality, we know that those messages are records. They contain information that should be retained. I want to just have a clarification. Doris does have a role in deletion policy. Under the charter, they are supposed to approve whether messages are deleted or not— I'm sorry, records are deleted or not.

So our draft bill would also make sure that instant messages are part of that. So I know my time is out, but— I think the draft legislation we put in this testimony, and that I know we shared with you in advance, I think would address many of the problems that were raised today, and we look forward to talking with you more about that.

Thank you very much. Thank you for waiting. Go ahead. Next.

Thank you, Chair Brewer and members of the committee. My name is Grace Rao. I'm the Executive Director of Citizens Union, a nonpartisan good government and democracy organization that has been working for honest accountable, effective government, fair and open elections, and a civically engaged public for nearly 130 years. I want to start by thanking you for calling this important oversight hearing, and I want to address the 2 main separate issues before the committee today.

First, on Signal and the idea of auto-delete apps and messaging. We believe that this is a clear black and white issue with a simple policy solution. Automatic delete functions should be explicitly prohibited from any official city business. I know firsthand from my time as a reporter at New York One, obtaining government records can sometimes require significant effort, but ultimately deserve to be in the public realm.

I successfully sued the de Blasio administration to obtain emails involving outside political advisors and fought City Hall's efforts to keep those records from public scrutiny. The growing use of instant messaging applications does create challenges because it's not just on one app like Signal. We're seeing WhatsApp, Slack, other platforms that are creating and adding auto-delete functions that make it more difficult to ensure that government records are retained and available to the public.

Doris does strongly discourage use of instant messaging for substantive conversations, but the existing policies do not go far enough, and it's necessary for the city to establish clear technology-neutral rules in the charter prohibiting government employees from using auto-delete functions for government communications. There's a basic principle that should be upheld here. City employees cannot use or permit the use of any function that automatically deletes or destroys a government record after a fixed And then on the second piece, the idea of paid government advertising, including influencer content, it needs to be publicly disclosed.

Others have mentioned the Federal Trade Commission has rules establishing influencers to clearly and conspicuously disclose paid relationships. That is needed here, and we believe that that requirement should be incorporated into the city's advertising code. advertising contracts, and that there should be a uniform citywide standard rather than leaving this up to individual agencies or contractors. There's more details on both in my written testimony.

But finally, on the question of unpaid influencers, we want to make it clear that there is nothing inherently wrong with City Hall communicating its actions, programs, or achievements to unpaid influencers. Social media content creators are now a permanent part of the communications landscape. We know elected officials will continue to use them to communicate with the public. We want to note that that engagement should not come at the expense of reporter access, press scrutiny, as we are seeing in Washington, D.C., and City Hall should not be providing influencers with any confidential information or privileged access to information in exchange for favorable coverage.

But we believe the city's existing ethics laws address those concerns.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Next. Thank you very much.

I'm Susan Lerner. I'm the executive director of Common Cause New York, and I too want to thank the chair and the committee for this hearing, which I think covers a lot of very important areas. I would like to focus on something that hasn't been fully discussed, I think, as in as great detail as I would like, which is the title is the Mamdani Administration's Civic Engagement Efforts.

And I think we need to be talking about what does it mean for the city to be involved in civic engagement? What is civic engagement? What is the appropriate use of city resources? And what is the goal? Academic definitions of civic engagement say that civic engagement means working to make a difference in the civic life of our communities and developing the combination of knowledge, skills, values, and motivation to make that difference.

And I was struck in the testimony from the commissioner of the Office of Mass Engagement of how fluidly she has incorporated a lot of the terminology about civic engagement, but that virtually all of her examples of the city's— her division, I would call it, her Office of Civic Engagement, were really performed by the smaller agency, the smaller offices within that umbrella that already existed.

And when I went to the Office of Mass Engagement's website, I was struck by the difference in how they are communicating on their website what they do with how she described what they do, because rather than talking about basic information of how to access or understand city government, it's very narrow. It's all about tenant organizing. And so we're not having the basic discussion of what is civic engagement and what should the city be fostering.

Should it be picking a particular type of organizing, or should it be a broader invitation to our residents to understand government and to affect it, whatever policies the individual thinks is a good idea. And some of that is happening— the Civic Engagement Commission, some of the outreach around benefits— but I would suggest that the outlook of the Office of Mass Engagement is actually different than what was testified here.

I would briefly like to say that when we're talking about influencers, I think we do need some disclosure about the ongoing relationship. And we suggest that a disclosure that says communication initiated by the City of New York or partnership with the City of New York provides information that the resident, that the taker of the social media needs to know where— is this really an independent communication?

Or does it result from suggestions like talking points, which are clearly, I agree, substantive communications, however they are communicated to the social media communicators? And our testimony has extensive suggestions for amendments and improvements to the bills, which we generally support, but we feel should be strengthened in specific. specific ways that we detail in our written testimony.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Question for the panel. We already heard from CFPB that they will oversight campaign money being spent on influencers and on pushing for an agenda. While we do not see that as news, But, um, my question is, my bill, um, is trying to fix this when the mayor is using tax dollars, um, to promote his agenda rather than treating it as a piece of news, just like the ballot proposal videos I've seen, or, or videos of, uh, the Office of Mass Engagement knocking door to door, uh, telling tenants about the unions out there and then that they could, they could join.

And That's not news. And the public has to know about that. And my question to you is that, well, to reinvent Albany is that you wrote here that you don't want— the council should not move the bill. But the spirit— my spirit of the bill is to close this gap and let the public know that what they're watching is not news.

Let's get her answer. Yes, please answer that. Yes, I think I— having listened to the CFPB, I think the way they put it is right, that, you know, the part of the chapter you're— the charter you're amending is about the independent expenditure disclosures, which we are very, very sensitive about as the New York— New York City has model independent expenditure disclosure rules with the paid-for by.

And I think your intent is for the mayor's activity while in office not as a candidate. Right. And we don't want to see changes to the IE disclosures, the paid-for-by disclosures that affect campaigns, because they are very strong, and CFPB has, like I said, is a national model on that. So I think if your intent is to regulate different activity, you know, maybe the bill needs a change.

But I understand your point that The public deserves more information, and we absolutely do support paid-for-by disclosures. As I mentioned, we think that it could be done through the contracting process. The FTC rules are one way to look at it, but I think your goals are similar to ours. I just think the application in the bill, the way it's drafted, is where we had some concerns.

So thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much.

We appreciate this, and we will go to the next Thank you. We've got Charles Diamond, Octavio Blanco, and Tony Rossum. Thank you all. Whomever would like to go first, thank you for being here. Hi.

Good morning. My name is Octavio Blanco. I'm the executive editor of Uptown Voices. We're a hyperlocal digital news and current events platform based in Washington Heights, Manhattan. We cover Inwood, Washington Heights, Harlem, and the South Bronx. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to testify today. It's important for me to be here to speak about my work and to dispel accusations in the media that we've been paid to cover aspects of Mamdani's or Chevalier's campaigns.

I'm also not on any Signal chat with the Mamdani administration. My communications with the administration is via email and phone conversations, sometimes SMS texts, as I do with any other source. As a digital impact leader in my community, it's very important for me and my publication, Uptown Voices, to retain the tremendous amount of trust that our audience has given us in the 16 months that we've been working.

Trust is our most valuable commodity, and we would never want to threaten that. Plus, we live in the community and are accountable every day to our neighbors. That's why during the District 13 congressional race, Uptown Voices made it a point to invite all 3 candidates to appear on our podcast. All the candidates accepted, and each of them appeared twice on our show for 1 hour each time.

No one paid us to appear on the program. In fact, in one instance, Adriano Espaillat insisted that we rent a studio to avoid any possible technical difficulties, which we did and paid for out of our own pocket despite having very limited resources. In another incidence— instance, the Espaillat campaign did offer us a $500 payment to attend a photo op in the community, which we rejected.

I'm proud to say that Uptown Voices punches way above its weight. We are an accredited news organization with the city. We often attend press conferences and ask sharp questions to the mayor about his policies and plans. We sit next to our more established national and international and local counterparts, and we ask questions that impact our community. We may be hyperlocal, but the issues we face uptown are similar to those faced by people all across the city, country, and dare I say, across the globe. as well.

I have more to say, but I can't take any questions because I have an interview to go to. So I will leave that— I'll leave my comments as those.

Thank you very much. Do you have a press pass or you do not? I do. I do have a press pass. That's great. All right. Thank you. Go ahead, sir.

Thank you very much. Thank you, Chair. My name is Charles Diamond. I worked for the city for over 8 years, and as you know, I have a particular expertise in procurement. I think that's one angle I want to bring to this that hasn't really been talked about. And then quickly back to the citywide policy. There's, um, the way that the city buys advertisement, buys media, is a longstanding concern.

The, uh, wonderful doctor in her article spoke with Jose Bayona, former head of community and ethnic media. And I worked with Jose when we created that new list in the beginning of the Alas administration. It was a year. It was working with DCAS and DOHMH regarding their existing op-ed and Miller contracts. in order to figure out a new way to utilize our tools to get this spending the right way.

That's called normal government behavior. When one person is getting a benefit, we should be very, very, very suspicious when a city agency is getting something for free that they normally pay for. In fact, it's one of the biggest red flags you can have. We talk about $0 contracts. Doesn't mean it's not a contract. In fact, it should make us more suspicious.

So clearly here, there are procurement avenues that should have been taken, that could have been taken. They chose not to. What are the benefits of doing that? A selection process, recordkeeping, protections against political interference, all of the things that we wanted here today. Turning quickly to the process angle, I found the testimony of the administration here before, uh, I mean, torturous to an extreme.

That circular logic behind transitory and substantive, I think, was— again, any of us who have worked in the city, we're bewildered. What are you telling me? This is the opposite of everything I've heard. Let's be very clear. We all know that you can't do government business on non-approved channels. Signal was not approved. I'd like to give another example.

You can't normally download apps on your phone without IT approving it. Who approved this downloaded app? Or was it on her private phone? Was someone ordered to allow that app to be put on there? Councilmember Moreno spoke about subpoenas. I think it's extremely appropriate in this case because unfortunately mistakes happen. New people into city government might not fully get a policy.

I get that. But when you go that defensive and you try and pretend that it was okay, it only raises more and more questions. I'll leave it at that. Thank you.

Thank you. Next.

Thank you, Council. Pleasure being here. My name is Tony Rassan. I run TBO Harlem Uptown, and I'm. producer of, uh, founder and producer of the Harlem Night Market as well as the Harlem Wellness Festival. We do a lot of work in the community, uh, with a special emphasis on amplifying and, uh, and focusing on small businesses. Um, our platform is very, uh, popular uptown.

We have, uh, uh, probably one of the largest followings, you know, along with like Uptown Collective and stuff. But, uh, what I really wanted to kind of come and say and speak and testify in this council hearing is regarding the, I guess, the signal group. I was a part of that signal group, and I didn't pay much attention to it because a lot of it is just press stuff, like, you know, links to information or things that would happen where Mamdani's coming to Harlem.

Those are things that are of particular interest to me. I've refused to— I mean, I just was not interested in some of the things that they kind of put forward. Or, you know, if I see something, a link or something that I'm interested in, I'll reach out and say, hey, I want to be here. But a lot of what I do and the trust in the community that we speak on comes from informing the community, about community boards and just to get active in the community to make sure that you understand what goes on in terms of like, you know, the biggest problems uptown are affordable housing.

I mean, that's among other things. But one of the things in terms of like our access to City Hall, this is kind of unprecedented because under the previous administrations, you know, content creators like myself never really had the opportunity to engage with the mayor's office and other city agencies. So, you know, that's kind of one of the things that I think is kind of misconstrued.

I've never been paid. I don't know people that have been paid, influencers or whatever. So when I saw the New York Post article, I was kind of confused. You know, I laughed about it. A lot of us laughed among ourselves about it because, you know, a lot of this stuff was just not true what we were reading. and stuff.

I speak for my community and I speak to my community. And if there's something that I'm not interested in, I don't cover it, I don't talk about it. And there will be differences. I already have differences with the Mamdani administration on some of the things that they do. And I'll talk about it. You know, like, I mean, I'm not, you know, controlled or paid by anybody.

Just wanted to say that.

Thank you. Thank you both. One of my questions for you, sir, is I think it's good that this administration is reaching out. Does it seem like what they're reaching out to you is probably not dissimilar than what they're sending to the Daily News or one of the other newspapers, right? It seems like it's the same material, or not?

Yeah, it is. And one of the other things, though, like I almost kind of laughed about it, was, you know, sometimes we get notices you know, literally the night before, oh, Mom Donnie's going to be in Harlem, you know, and I'm like, hey, I can't, I can't, I can't do anything with it because it's just too late on, you know, you're putting it on my calendar way too late.

So we're not necessarily getting super early access to information and stuff. When he made the announcements on, on the, uh, the public grocery stores, I received that information and, and attended just like any, any other press, uh, um, outlet would. Do you have a press pass or you do not? I do not have a press pass. Do not have a press pass.

Do not. Okay. I have a question about procurement. Obviously, in this case, it's often the— I call them the middle managers or the Millers of the world. How do you think that does or doesn't work? I know you didn't have much time, so I wanted to follow up. No, and I would say as an operations person, I relied on the subject matter expertise of people like Jose Bayona and indeed Roman Goffman at DCAS and saying, how does this work?

I think in terms of it's really evolved. COVID was a big sea change in terms of getting information out. So again, we talk about meeting people where they are. That's always been the goal in doing that way. I would really say I think procurement-wise, it desperately needed to be reformed. And we did a great job of reforming that because it was an awful lot of money without necessarily a lot of product.

But again, I think this is why you want a procurement and selection method with all of the protections that it has, because you have to guarantee you're measuring outcomes. What's our goal? There's a way of measuring all these things that does indeed sanitize it. So, all in favor of more exciting, you know, more creative ways of reaching people, but again, we need to do it in the ways that are, that are not violative of other laws that are there for a reason.

And it really comes down to the idea of, they spoke about it before, people are trained about this all the time. So either the training didn't happen, or someone ignored it, something happened. And it's especially worrying when it's the mayor's office, because again, as an agency grunt will tell you, the chances of them downloading an app on their phone they're not allowed to have are exactly zero.

So that is perhaps the worrying part.

Okay, thank you both very much. I really appreciate your time. Thanks for waiting. Next panel is Taiwan Green and Norbert Briacento. Thank you both. Go ahead, whomever wants to start.

Good morning. Good morning. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak. My name is Tywan Green. My handle is Mr. Fingers. I'm a music producer, educator, community organization— organizer. I would like to state for the record that I have never been offered or accepted to pay— accepted pay for any contact I've done with the mayor administration.

In fact, I have lost money from calling out of work to cover events and press conferences. I was never directed in any way on how to message my videos. When I was contacted a year ago by a social media team, I still wasn't certain of who I was going to vote for. After spending time around the then-candidate and seeing his consistency every day, I started to believe he could really deliver change.

But that does not mean that I will agree with everything that he does. I told him and his team I will hold them accountable. He told me he wanted to be held accountable and earn the trust of New Yorkers. They have never stopped me from asking any question, and I have criticized them on some videos. Why am I doing this for free?

Because I never thought a person that comes from where I come from will ever have the opportunity to have this type of access. I believe it's my responsibility to sacrifice my time and my resources to educate myself and my followers about the political process, and to record and report the full context of stories. Traditional press may not have the time to ask questions that are related to Southeast Queens, but I will use this opportunity to do just that.

Thank you for your time. I have to go.

Thank you very much. Go ahead, sir. Yes, uh, good afternoon and thank you for the opportunity to speak. My name is Norberto Briceño. I'm a New York City content creator and my work focuses on art, history, infrastructure, and the kind of interesting things about this city. I want to start by being completely transparent. I have made videos about the Mondani administration, usually talking about their work in making buses faster.

I have never been paid by the administration to make those videos. I've done them because I think it's useful for my audience and residents in general to know what their local government is doing, and I think there's an important conversation to have about that. There are more than 8 million people in this city, and they don't all get their information from the same place.

Some people read newspapers or watch local news, others get their information from cable networks, and others get their information from social media. No single outlet can reach everybody. That's why I think it's— I think content creators can play an important role in helping the city communicate with the public. My work is already about New York City, so when I talk about what our elected officials are doing, it's because it connects to the things that I cover and the questions my audience cares about.

Journalists, media outlets, and creators can all play different roles in making sure that New Yorkers have access to accurate factual information. And communication with the government doesn't have to mean agreement. Ultimately, people should have the opportunity to hear what their government is doing and make up their own minds. Of course, when the city pays a creator to produce something, that relationship should be transparent, but simply communicating with creators shouldn't be treated as inherently political or improper.

We live in a social media age, and it The local government wants New Yorkers to understand what's happening in their city. They have to meet them where they are. An informed New Yorker is better equipped to participate and hold the government accountable. So I think that's good for New York City. So thank you.

And so when, uh, you were also part of the group of people who were participating in the campaign and then you switched over, is that correct? Yes, that is correct. And you were Were you given, I would say, guidance on how to be not political when you're part of a government listserv, so to speak, or it was just known that that's how you have to be?

No, I think I've had experience in media training, and so for the most part, I'd never— what I tend to focus on is literally the straight facts. And literally, you know, I don't try to sway the audience to think one way or another. I just literally say the facts. What are people talking about? And as my content is usually very dry because it keeps to the facts.

Right. Okay. And you find that that's true with some of the other content folks also, is they're keeping to the facts? I think so. I believe so from what I've seen and what I've connected with. Okay. Thank you very much.

Thank you. We have Chris Johnson in person, and then online we're going to have Tim Uh, Fulton. All right, ready? Yes. Yeah, my name is Christopher Leon Johnson. I'm a media press credential holder, 47360, as far as 2027. Let me make this clear that both, uh, Mr. Fingers and Uptown Voices are known liars. Let me make this clear that they get paid through third-party agencies.

That's how they get paid. The way it works, mayor's office, is they get— they control the narrative. If you ask the mayor A question they don't want to hear, they will not allow it to be, um, asked to the point where they'll make you delete the videos. Let me make this clear, these guys are getting paid. They won't admit it because if they start admitting to the people that they're getting paid, they lose all credibility.

They get paid through third-party vendors. Let's keep that clear. I want to say this right now, the problem with this mayor administration is that they solely rely on influencers, and he doesn't understand that Room 9 controls City Hall. Room 9 is the reason why he's the mayor. They could easily turn on this guy and say like, well, let's make— let's, let's give him the Eric Adams heat, Andrew Cuomo heat, and he's out of here as mayor.

But what needs to start going forward is that, uh, people like Mr. Fingers need to be transparent to his people and tell him that he will never hold the mayor accountable. I think that Mr. Fingers is, uh, Mayor Magani's little, uh, little go-to Negro when it comes to pushing the narrative for the the mayor's administration. That's the facts.

You know, the problem with the city is that this mayor's administration, that they— this is an influencer-relied-on administration instead of like real journalism. And real journalism starts at Room 9, not with these fake influencers that just hold an iPhone thinking that they know stuff about the city because they do little kiddie-type TikTok videos. Going forward, I think the city council needs to really should have asked Mr.

Fingers, but everybody knew why he was busy because he didn't want to answer the hard questions that well how do you get yeah do you work with the third-party vendors that the city hires to do the do the content do the content with so going forward thank you for having us here Mrs. Brewer and that's all I got to say but yeah Mr.

Fingers is my Donnie's go-to Negro thank you very much.

Um, online we've got Tim Fullerton. I have a prepared statement, but I do want to make something very clear based on the previous testimony. The people in that group were not paid by the Memdani administration. They were not paid by a third party. That is a Signal chat that gets the same type of information that Room 9 gets.

I will also say something about Room 9. The New York Post, when they covered this story, ran a photo of Emilia Rowland in it, which was something that they pulled from her Instagram account, and it was a photo of her in, uh, in a swimming pool. So if we're going to talk about credibility and we're going to talk about who has the credibility, there is plenty of blame to go around with people who are good actors and who are not.

And the New York Post decided to go down a sexist route to try to make a salacious point because they didn't have any details or any specifics about what this was, nor they understood. it. So I just want to respond to that outrageous comment that was made before and was highly inappropriate for a million reasons. And again, they may get paid by a third-party entity for creator work.

They did not get that from the Mamdani administration. So I just want to clear the record there. Now, moving on to my, my statement. So as I said, my name is Tim Fullerton. I'm the founder and CEO of Find Out Media, which is a left-leaning leaning progressive media operation. I have also been the Chief Digital Officer of the State of New York, and I've also been the Director of Digital Strategy in the Obama administration at the U.S.

Department of the Interior. So I know a little bit about this issue. And I want to thank Chair Brewer and the members of the committee for having me today. And I want to talk a little bit about what happened here. You know, when I did these jobs in the federal government and the state government, I learned something simple.

Government information is only useful if it reaches people. Today, millions of New Yorkers don't get their news from newspapers or the 6 o'clock broadcast, or frankly, even know it exists. They get it from creators they trust on platforms that they already use. A mayor's office that ignores those people isn't being careful. It's being absent. So let's be clear about what this Signal group is.

It's a distribution list. The mayor's office— Time has expired. Event invitations and access to officials. This is the same thing that the press gets. Now, I believe that the the the the they need to turn on and they have turned on the thing that keeps them from being deleted. But this is the same information that the press is getting, and I think it would be wise for the city council to look at this and modify some rules to make sure that all types of communication are allowed so that the mayor can get his information out as. especially in areas where the press isn't covering.

Thank you very much. I want to thank you. Your expertise will be helpful as we craft legislation. I totally agree with you with what you're stating, and I hope that comes across. We want to have information carried. It just has to be in a way that incorporates, in my opinion, the FOIL and the archiving that we've all worked on for the last 30 or 40 years.

Totally agree.

Councilmember Wong, do you have any questions? All right, this hearing is concluded. Is there anything else we need to add? No. Okay. I want to thank everybody who hung out for such a long time. We have a lot of work to do. We really appreciate you being here, and we'll talk to you soon. Thank you. This hearing ends.