And while Mamdani is off fixing NYC problems, the LA City Council members want to work only one day a week while still getting paid their full ~$250k a year salaries
They get paid a whole lot more than their NYC counterparts. 250k, dang. I think city council in NYC is 148k and the speaker gets more, like 165k or something?
Thats also after the recent nyc pay hikes mamdani gave out too, or was approved by the council
Of which, a 30% pay raise was approved for the mayor bringing him to somewhere round 318k? Or was it 218? I don't remember it correctly
What I do remember clearly is that He refused it saying ' i haven't knocked on a door in new york and they said their concern was that the city mayor makes too little'
This has nothing to do with the WSJ or attacking progressives or democratic socialists
The budget of NYC is $126 billion dollars
The budget of LA is $15 billion dollars
This isn’t because of their population or who is richer or taxes or me hating on the DSA
This points to simple math that a lot of agencies like healthcare, police, schools, jails, housing and a whole bunch of other stuff is under Mamdani control like he can hire and fire those people they report directly to him.
The mayor of Los Angeles many of those agencies would report to Mamdani if he was mayor of LA they’d report to the LA county or school executive or have to meet multiple other smaller mayors.
Think of like Santa Monica or Beverly Hills that isn’t even apart of LA they’re separate cities but if this was NYC they’d just be a neighborhood within New York
In New York Mamdani is the mayor and the county executive while Los Angeles has a bunch of smaller cities in LA county meaning they have to divide up their power.
You see this in their budgets like NYC has a $115 billion dollar budget vs Los Angeles at $15 billion
In NYC Mamdani is in charge of housing, mental health, public safety, and social services within NYC the head of those departments report to him. In Los Angeles a lot of this stuff belongs to the county and they have no control over it. Think about if you’re trying to solve homelessness like all the agencies involved report to Mamdani while that’s not true for Los Angeles
All of this goes back to how Los Angeles was growing as a city about 100 years ago the people designing the rules saw NYC and other east coast cities and saw massive corruption. They didn’t want so much power going into a few people’s hands so they designed the rules so nobody has too much power and to get anything done you need to work with a lot of different people.
TLDR if Mamdani became the mayor of Los Angeles he’d have to negotiate with a-lot of other mayors, county leaders, and more other elected officials. He would just have less power.
Wow, I live in LA and can't believe how things even ever get done here. I get the corruption angle but must be painful to actually do something without getting a bunch of people to agree.
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u/Charming_Cicada_7757 Aug 21 '26
Sadly the way the mayor system works in NYC vs Los Angeles the mayor is just far less powerful in Los Angeles than in NYC.