NY Dirt: Mamdani’s BSA pick heads to the hot seat
Mitch Korbey, chair of Herrick's Land Use and Zoning Practice, was quoted in The Real Deal discussing lawmakers’ concerns over NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s nominee to lead the Board of Standards and Appeals (BSA).
The article notes that Mamdani’s pick to lead the BSA, John Mangin, "who is currently director of the Department of City Planning’s housing division, received vociferous opposition from many council members who took issue with a paper he wrote more than a decade ago in Stanford University Law and Policy Review."
Mitch, who previously served as a BSA commissioner during the Giuliani and Bloomberg administrations, thinks the Council is likely to set aside its differences with Mangin and ultimately confirm him to lead BSA on September 1, 2026.
"It’s a very special agency, it certainly has its powers, but it’s not a legislative function or political function at all, and it’s always been independent," Mitch said. "It’s not implementing new policy, it’s simply in a very discrete fashion going to be ruling and making decisions on certain housing development projects."
If he secures the role of BSA chair, Mangin won’t have unilateral say on matters before the board, nor will he necessarily operate in lockstep with the mayoral administration that selected him for the job, according to Mitch.
"When I was there, there were times when I voted on things that might have been unpopular in terms of the administration," he said. "The chair only has one vote, just as the other commissioners, and it takes a majority of the board to adopt anything. This has become political, it’s become a push and pull between the administration and the Council, but John [Mangin] is without question qualified, without question an expert in his field."
"I understand the Council’s concern here, but this is not a political decision," Mitch said. "We have seen in the past decade or so, particularly in the area of neighborhood rezonings, what I sometimes call hyper-localism. Initiatives that can have a broad city impact and provide real opportunities for a borough or the city have been held up because of the concerns of a block."
Read the full article in The Real Deal here. Access may require a subscription.