Menin’s Fair Fares push tests Mamdani

DAYS THE BUDGET IS LATE: 36 ALL’S FARE: City Council Speaker Julie Menin portrayed Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration today as stuck running a failing mass transit discount program. The alternative? Her own plan to provide free fares to hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers. Drawing that very particular contrast served as an attempt to turn the tables on Mamdani, who made free buses a key campaign pledge. Menin’s preferred approach is to expand Fair Fares — an existing discount for low-income residents — into a free bus and subway program for people at or below 150 percent of the poverty level. In the process, Menin and other Council members poked the administration for not enrolling enough people in the current iteration of Fair Fares by failing to cut unnecessary red tape. Right now, less than 40 percent of eligible people participate, leaving half a million New Yorkers paying full freight for rides they could get at half price. Menin called it “failing” and blamed a multi-step enrollment process that includes downloading an app and filing out a lengthy form. "There has to be a recognition that the system is broken," she said during a Council hearing today. Rebecca Chew, a chief program officer from the city’s Human Resources Administration, told Menin the agency “worked hard to streamline the process and identify efficiencies, and it's something we're continuously looking at to improve and refine.” Later, Chew said that nearly half the people enrolled in one year — right now that’s 380,000 — fail to re-enroll in the next. Fair Fares largely predates Mamdani, but under lengthy questioning from Council Member Crystal Hudson, Chew and her colleagues did not offer specific targets for improving enrollment. The Council is seeking to make enrollment automatic. Menin opened the hearing by saying she was "very disappointed" in the Mamdani administration for not sending the head of the Department of Social Services to testify. "I'd be remiss if I did not express our dee