NEW YORK CITY — The NYGOP today submitted a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request demanding records relating to the creation of the public list of properties subject to the Mamdani-Hochul Home Tax, including communications between New York City and Governor Kathy Hochul’s office over how the list was developed and whether officials understood the dangers it would create.
“The Mamdani-Hochul Home Tax isn’t just bad policy – it’s dangerous,” said NYGOP Chair Ed Cox. “Kathy Hochul and Zohran Mamdani have put a government seal on a roadmap to people’s homes. This is unconscionably reckless in an era in which radical left-wing political violence is on the rise.”
Recent news reports have also revealed that many homeowners have been wrongly identified as subject to the tax. “These mistakes leave innocent New Yorkers facing tens of thousands of dollars in improper tax bills, penalties, legal costs and the Kafkaesque burden of proving to government that government itself got it wrong,” Cox continued.
The FOIL request seeks to understand who designed the list, what standards were used to determine who appeared on it, what safeguards were implemented to protect innocent homeowners from erroneous inclusion, whether officials discussed the obvious security implications of publishing the list, and what role Governor Hochul’s administration played throughout the process.
“The public deserves to know whether Kathy Hochul’s office recognized the danger of publishing what amounts to a government-generated directory of targeted homes, or whether anyone in Albany even bothered to ask the question,” Cox said. “Either they knowingly endangered New Yorkers, or they never stopped to consider the consequences. Neither answer is acceptable.
“The Mamdani-Hochul Home Tax has already become synonymous with class warfare and bureaucratic incompetence. The public deserves to know exactly how this fiasco happened and who signed off on it.”
The New York Republican Party will make the records public upon receipt. A copy of the FOIL request is available here.
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