She’s Zoh’s Albany whisperer.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani tapped finances veteran Simonia Brown on Wednesday to be his go-between with state lawmakers as he presses his socialist agenda.
Brown, 42, will function senior adviser for coverage and technique in her return to Metropolis Corridor, the place she beforehand held the same function urgent the Large Apple’s priorities in Albany for Mayor Invoice de Blasio.
“Her monitor report of successful budgets and insurance policies that raise up working folks might be invaluable as we ship on our affordability agenda for New Yorkers,” Mamdani stated in a press release.
The appointment of Brown seems far much less incendiary than Mamdani’s choose of Cea Weaver, his Democratic Socialists of America-member tenant advocate whose fiery previous included blasting homeownership as a “weapon of white supremacy.”
In contrast, Brown constructed a low-profile profession as a quietly influential public servant, shifting steadily by key roles in Albany and New York Metropolis authorities over the previous twenty years, in keeping with her LinkedIn.
She most lately served as assistant comptroller underneath New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli.
Brown’s rise into statewide management adopted a tour by Metropolis Corridor throughout the de Blasio’s administration, serving as director of state legislative affairs — a key emissary to Albany on finances and coverage issues.
The expertise might come in useful as a lot of Mamdani’s $10 billion guarantees — from common childcare to free buses — will depend on backing from Gov. Kathy Hochul and state lawmakers, notably on his objective to spice up taxes on the wealthy.
The town’s finances stood at roughly $75 billion in 2013, when Brown’s former boss — de Blasio — first took workplace. The groundhog killing mayor then presided over yr after yr of spending will increase, resulting in a whopping $98.6 billion finances throughout 2021, his final yr in workplace.
By the point de Blasio’s successor Eric Adams left workplace in 2025, the finances ballooned $118.6 billion.
Mamdani additionally appointed Christine Clarke, a New York Metropolis-based civil rights and poverty lawyer, to function chair and commissioner for the Metropolis Fee on Human Rights.
Clarke, an Oberlin School and Yale Legislation Faculty grad, constructed her profession in constitutional and civil rights legislation, together with her previous roles directing the Civil Rights Justice Initiative at Authorized Providers NYC and urgent nationwide abortion‑entry instances for Deliberate Parenthood.
When President Trump’s administration eliminated references to transgender folks from the Stonewall Memorial, Clarke launched a press release by Authorized Providers NYC condemning the try and “erase trans folks from historical past.”
“The federal authorities can’t erase transgender and gender non-conforming folks from the material of our society, from our households, or from our communities,” she stated within the assertion. “This try and erase trans folks from historical past is yet one more try to harm folks, to divide us, to harden our tradition, and to incite hatred in opposition to a neighborhood of people that day by day danger their lives to easily exist.”
— Extra reporting by Hannah Fierick and Vaughn Golden
