A catalog of public testimony to the Commission on Government Efficiency (COGE), New York City's 2026 charter revision commission, chaired by Patrick Gaspard. Testimony is grouped by idea rather than by speaker, so proposals raised by more than one person are visible at a glance. Each backer links to their testimony — the moment in the hearing video, or a written submission where one exists.
Coverage spans all five first-round borough hearings — Manhattan, the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island — plus all five second-round borough hearings, cataloging the 246 members of the public who testified (commissioners and staff aside) and the 90 shared ideas they raised — both rounds of borough hearings are now complete. A written-comment period runs into mid-July 2026, and this tool will be updated as that testimony comes in. COGE's proposals are due to reach voters on the November 2026 ballot.
On July 20, 2026 the commission released its proposed charter amendments — five questions headed for the November ballot. Ideas in this catalog that those amendments would enact are boxed and labeled with their ballot question. The five questions cover outdoor dining and revocable consents (Q1), notice and comment on contract awards (Q2), major transportation projects and city property (Q3), consolidating construction permitting in the Buildings Department (Q4) and the Rainy Day Fund (Q5).
Making the ballot is not the same as getting what was asked for. Each boxed idea carries a plain-language reading of what the amendment actually does, what it leaves out and what it contains that nobody asked for — several questions answer only part of the testimony, and some carry substantial provisions no witness raised.
Matching testimony to amendments, and reading the legal text against what witnesses said, is our judgment — not the commission's. The proposals are legal text and name no witnesses. Read the amendments yourself before relying on any of it, and note that the vast majority of ideas here did not make the ballot.
COGE does not publish a consolidated record of who testified or what they asked for, and citymeetings.nyc has not transcribed the 2026 hearings. This catalog is compiled from the commission's own hearing videos plus written submissions that testifiers or their organizations have published. Names and quotes are drawn from auto-generated captions and checked against public records where possible; treat them as provisional.
Official channels: schedule and livestreams at nyc.gov/site/charter · submit testimony via the comment form or CharterTestimony@citycharter.nyc.gov
Every idea raised at the hearings, ordered by the number of distinct people who argued for it. Click any bar to jump to the detail.
Ideas are grouped into broad themes — tap a theme to open it. Search or filter to look across all of them at once.
This is an idea-centric reading of the public record, not an official transcript. The transcripts from all five of COGE's first-round borough hearings (Manhattan, June 9; the Bronx, June 10; Brooklyn, June 11; Queens, June 22; and Staten Island, June 23) and all five second-round hearings (the Bronx, June 30; Brooklyn, July 1; Staten Island, July 6; Manhattan, July 8; and Queens, July 13) were used to identify each public witness and the concrete proposals they made, then those proposals were clustered into shared ideas. Transcripts come from YouTube's auto-generated captions where available; hearings that had no published captions when ingested were transcribed from the audio with OpenAI's Whisper. Where a witness or their organization has published their full written testimony or a closely related position, the entry links to it. Documented written submissions — including Comptroller Mark Levine and Council Member Phil Wong — are folded in and labeled. Commissioners, staff and procedural talk are excluded. Both rounds of borough hearings are complete, and every one of the ten has been checked against the commission's own official record. COGE held its final meeting on July 23, 2026 and adopted the amendments that go to voters in November.
Names came from the auto-captions, which routinely garble them — especially for the many immigrant and community witnesses. Each name was checked against public records (organization staff pages, news coverage) and against the commission's own official record for that hearing — the stenographic transcript or the signed meeting minutes, both of which list each speaker. All ten borough hearings have now been reconciled that way, and many names were corrected in the process. Where the official record and an independent public record disagree, the independently documented spelling wins: the commission's stenographers garble names too. 10 of the 246 witnesses still could not be confirmed; those are marked with a dotted underline, and hovering gives a note. Treat any flagged spelling as provisional and confirm against the video before quoting by name.
This covers the 2026 Commission on Government Efficiency only. New York City has had four charter commissions in roughly two years, and a lot of widely cited "charter testimony" actually belongs to the 2024 and 2025 commissions. Those were deliberately left out.
Some major interests are shaping COGE from inside rather than through testimony: DC 37's Henry Garrido and the Partnership for New York City's Kathryn Wylde sit on the commission itself. All ten borough hearings are now catalogued and the commission has finished its work. Written testimony is another gap: COGE publishes no archive of the comments it received, so a written submission appears here only when the witness or their organization published it themselves.