Linda Tigani, the chairperson of the city’s Commission on Racial Equity, will remain in her role for an additional year, Mayor Mamdani said Wednesday — after he had sought to replace her but faced backlash from the City Council.
The mayor’s pick to lead the independent commission, Christopher Alexander, is now expected to belatedly take the helm in August 2027. Alexander is currently the executive director of the NAACP New York State Conference and previously headed the state’s Office of Cannabis Management.
“Alongside the City Council, we have agreed to extend (Tigani’s) term to next summer,” the mayor said Wednesday at a Brooklyn press conference. “And we’re excited to work with the same Council to put forward Christopher Alexander as the next commissioner to pick up the mantle that Linda is going to leave behind.”
Tigani, who has led the commission since it was formed in 2023, has been critical of the Mamdani administration’s handling of its long-delayed racial equity plan. Her three-year term technically ended at the end of July. But the Council, which must approve any changes of the commission’s leadership, on Tuesday voiced opposition to replacing her. The Council’s Black, Latino and Asian Caucus, which includes a large majority of the body, said in a letter that appointing a new chief of the commission could be “detrimental” to its work on a truth, healing and reconciliation process and study on reparations.
Council Speaker Julie Menin told Mamdani Tuesday evening that she was siding with the caucus and wouldn’t approve new leadership at the commission.
City rules stipulate that if the two branches of City Hall can’t agree on a replacement within 90 days of the term’s end, the chairperson’s tenure is then extended a year.
In his comments Wednesday, Mamdani praised Alexander as “someone who has spent his career advancing this very cause of racial equity.”
“I’m confident in his abilities to advance this work,” the mayor said, “as well as his ability and capacity to hold us accountable should we waiver in it.”
A City Council spokesperson said Wednesday the Council was going through a vetting process for Alexander.
Tigani, too, has pushed back on the mayor’s move to replace her — going on an Instagram live on Monday with R&B stars Kelly Price and Tamar Braxton to state her case for continuing to run the commission. The New York Times was first to report on Mamdani’s maneuvers.