Brad Lander
Comptroller- New York City
Brad is a member of the City Council from Brooklyn. As a co-founder of the Council’s Progressive Caucus, Brad helped bring participatory budgeting to New York City and has a track record of partnering with community advocates to win data-driven, innovative campaigns to protect workers, expand tenants rights, hold the NYPD accountable, and win safer streets.
Prior to serving in the City Council, Brad was a community planner and housing advocate. He spent 15 years in the nonprofit sector as the director of two organizations, the Pratt Center for Community Development and the Fifth Avenue Committee. He lives in Park Slope with his wife, Meg Barnette, President and CEO of NonProfit New York, and their children, Marek and Rosa.
Brad is running for NYC Comptroller to help our city rise to the challenges we’re facing.
The Comptroller has a critical role to play in helping to rebuild a more equitable economy and prepare our city to confront the challenges of the future. The office has the tools and the responsibility to ensure we are holding government accountable to its promises, to public sector retirees and to future generations of New Yorkers. As Comptroller, Brad will put those tools to work to help NYC recover from one of its most daunting crises, and build a better, fairer, and more resilient city.
Collaborative Legislator
Working together with labor unions and workers organizations, Brad has led successful fights to win groundbreaking laws that protect freelancers from wage theft, give fast-food workers a fair work week, ban discriminatory credit checks for employment, and to guarantee Uber and Lyft drivers earn a living wage. Together with community members, Brad passed the Community Safety Act to combat discriminatory stop-and-frisk policing.
Data-Driven, Innovative Policymaker
Brad’s hard-hitting policy reports have led to better bus service, air-conditioning for all NYC school classrooms, and restored hundreds of millions of dollars for affordable housing. Brad has taken a data-driven, innovative approach to successful policy campaigns to protect workers, expand tenants rights, and get reckless drivers off the roads.
Good Government Watchdog
Brad has passed some of the strongest laws in the country to make election spending more transparent, win ranked choice voting for New York City, brought a dozen agencies together to bring transparency to capital project spending, and brought participatory budgeting to NYC. His legislation has resulted in better tracking of expenditures across NYC’s parks, more effective ways to measure and combat poverty, and won new transit infrastructure for our neighborhoods.
Community Organizer
Brad approaches everything he does as an organizer, working with community members and fellow elected officials to build progressive political power for a more just, more equitable and more compassionate future. By helping to bring participatory budgeting to NYC, Brad has involved tens of thousands of New Yorkers in shaping the city’s investments in our neighborhoods. By launching #GetOrganizedBK, he brought thousands of Brooklyn residents together to stand up to bigotry, corruption, and injustice of the Trump regime.