Mayor Mamdani’s aides violated city rules and state law in using the disappearing Signal app to send messages to internet influencers to help them to spread word of the mayor’s achievements. Breaking the law evidently isn’t one of the mayoral achievements City Hall is seeking to amplify.
Rather than have the responsible party, Emilia Rowland, the director of new media and cultural communications, explain to the City Council what she and her office did against explicit written policies, Mamdani sent two other officials with no knowledge about the misconduct, Shawn(ta) Smith-Cruz, commissioner of the Department of Records and Information Services (DORIS) and Tascha Van Auken, commissioner of the Office of Mass Engagement.
Of course Smith-Cruz and Van Auken had nothing to tell the Council about Rowland’s breach, even as Mamdani was saying, “I’m confident in the testimony that our administration is providing today, that it will be sufficient in answering the Council’s questions.”
Not only weren’t the Council’s questions answered, Smith-Cruz, a professional librarian and archivist, who was dean of Barnard College Library until this spring, only served to confuse things by talking about “transitory” and “substantive” messages.
Under a May 2, 2025 DORIS Policy on Instant Electronic Messaging Records that applies to all municipal agencies, including the mayor’s office, “transitory” are only brief, fleeting notes “such as personal messages between co-workers and time dependent communications regarding purely logistical matters.” So “what did you want for lunch today?” or “the Yankees are doing well” or “I’ll be 15 minutes late to today’s 3 p.m. meeting.”
Everything else “which document or relate to the decisions, actions, or policies of a City office or agency must be retained” and because of that the policy says “employees are strongly discouraged from creating instant electronic messages that are substantive in nature.” Rowland was not sending out “transitory” messages to the influencers and she used instant electronic messages.
The mayor’s chief counsel, Ramzi Kassem, wrote a Jan. 15 memo to the staff of the mayor’s office which says: “You should not use WhatsApp, Signal, or any other communications app or platform for work.” That sentence is all in bold, with the word “not” underlined.
However, Rowland still used Signal to communicate with hundreds of influencers and those communications were not retained, which is why any kind of instant electronic messages should not be used, even ones that don’t automatically erase themselves and why DORIS says don’t do it.
The communications of city employees from the mayor on down are public records and must be retained and archived and made available to anyone using the legally-enforceable state Freedom of Information Law. If the records aren’t kept, nothing can be archived and FOIL is useless.
When confronted with this, Kassem said on Sept. 4 that “So, there is no citywide blanket ban on the use of Signal or other apps like that.” But there is a blanket ban on Signal at City Hall and Kassem is the one who imposed the ban.
He was then a bit cute in saying that “At City Hall, our policy is we have a general rule and then, of course, we have exceptions. The general rule is that City Hall employees should use the apps and the messaging apps and the communication apps that are downloaded by default on their devices and that they should come to my office if there is a need, on a team-by-team basis, to use any other app like Signal or WhatsApp or TikTok.”
The general rule at City Hall is no Signal and yet Kassem apparently gave Rowland the OK to use Signal and Signal did what Signal is supposed to do and it automatically erased the communications.
Kassem and Rowland are the ones who should be answering before the Council.