About Brad
Brad Lander is a big-hearted, tough-minded citywide leader who’s devoted his life to fighting for New York City — and has a record of results to prove it.
A bold government reformer, innovator, husband, and dad, Brad works every day to make our city safer, our neighborhoods more livable and affordable, our government more effective, and our future more sustainable. The New York Times said Brad is “among the hardest-working and most effective public servants in the city,” and praised his “prudence and competence.”
In the 1990s and 2000s, Brad led two not-for-profit, affordable housing and community development groups, the Fifth Avenue Committee and the Pratt Center for Community Development, where he built hundreds of units of affordable housing and created job training programs that have helped thousands of New Yorkers find employment. At the Pratt Center, Brad led successful campaigns to demand affordable housing through rezoning and tax incentive programs.
As a Council Member, Lander took risks to make powerful change happen. He led the community planning effort to shape and pass the Gowanus Rezoning, generating over 8,000 units of new housing, over 3,000 of them affordable to low-income and working-class families, with investments in open space, arts, environmental remediation, stormwater protection, and NYCHA — one of the few large-scale rezonings to win overwhelming support from its community board. And Lander helped to initiate and shepherd the successful effort to desegregate the middle schools of Brooklyn’s District 15.
As Comptroller, Brad is New York City’s chief financial officer and chief accountability officer, managing a team of roughly 700 professionals. He has consistently held the Adams Administration accountable, uncovered waste and abuse, and saved hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars. Lander sounded the alarm on Adams’ rampant use of emergency procurement and forced the Administration to cancel its $432 million no-bid contract with the unqualified vendor DocGo. He revealed gross deficiencies in the Administration’s failing efforts to get homeless people off the street and revealed its inadequate preparedness for the new normal of extreme weather and storms. His audit of NYC Ferry revealed $224 million in hidden expenditures and led to a restructuring of the service.
Brad’s investigations, budget analyses, and policy reports shed light on the effects of the Mayor’s proposed budget cuts to libraries and CUNY, detailed the Adams Administration’s poor implementation of the misguided 60-day shelter limit for asylum-seekers, and pointed the path forward to building capital projects on-time and on-budget and improving emergency management as we enter the era of the climate crisis.
Under Brad’s stewardship, New York City’s public pension funds have earned strong returns and grown to record levels, with a broad and diversified investment approach. Lander has led the nation in “responsible investing,” leading shareholder advocacy to strengthen workers’ rights at Starbucks and Amazon, and adopting the boldest “net zero” plan of any pension fund in the US. Lander’s innovative investment in purchasing the loan portfolio of the defaulted Signature Bank is protecting nearly 35,000 rent-stabilized housing units in New York City while yielding high returns for pensioners. His initiative to set “Responsible Property Management Standards” for real estate investment funds is protecting tenants across the country.
Brad has used every tool in the Comptroller’s toolbox to make NYC a more thriving, equitable, and sustainable city. He’s returned millions of dollars in stolen wages to workers by enforcing the prevailing wage. And he helped ensure that NYC retirees will have adequate health care and financial security by rejecting the plan to force them into inferior Medicare Advantage plans.
Prior to being elected Comptroller in 2021, Brad was a bold and creative leader in the City Council, where his numerous victories include concrete gains to expand workers’ rights, strengthen tenant protections, invest in public schools, and strengthen our democracy. Brad passed the first laws in the country to guarantee a living wage for Uber and Lyft drivers and deliveristas, and to shield fast-food and retail workers from abusive scheduling, and protect freelancers. He authored the Independent Expenditure Disclosure Act, giving NYC the most aggressive SuperPAC disclosure requirements in the country, and brought participatory budgeting to NYC. He led the campaign that secured air-conditioning in all NYC school classrooms, after working with students on a policy report showing that 25 percent of classrooms did not have A/C, making it #TooHotToLearn for students and teachers.
Brad lives with his wife, Meg Barnette, in Brooklyn where they raised two children, Marek and Rosa, both of whom graduated from NYC public schools. He loves Prospect Park, CUNY graduations, and NYC street food, tries to stay in shape by boxing and running to work across the Brooklyn Bridge, and is a proud season ticket holder for the WNBA champions the New York Liberty.