I'm a lifelong New Yorker running to be the state's next Comptroller — and the first Democrat to challenge 19-year incumbent Tom DiNapoli. 

As a gubernatorial aide, I began my career fighting the Bush Administration for undocumented immigrants to have access to something as simple as a driver’s license. As Chief of Staff of The Port Authority of NY & NJ, I played a central role in reviving the rebuilding of the World Trade Center, which had been stalled by years of bureaucratic gridlock. I then went on to help forge a transition to renewable energy, building solar farms across the United States. This required navigating very complex financial, regulatory, and built environments - but we did so with success. Today, 400,000 homes are powered by the solar energy capacity we created. 

For the last five years, I’ve been taking on our national affordable housing crisis as COO and then co-CEO of Enterprise Community Partners, the largest affordable housing nonprofit in the nation, helping create and preserve more than 1 million affordable homes. 

I am running for New York State Comptroller to finally leverage the enormous amounts of power and money concentrated in the office to protect and uplift working New Yorkers: workers, tenants, immigrants, and more. 

The Comptroller is the sole trustee of a nearly $300 billion pension fund – the third-largest in the U.S.  – and has the power to audit how every single state tax dollar is spent. That means this position can, without the Governor or the Legislature, leverage billions of dollars to address the most pressing challenges New Yorkers are facing and it can force the immense bureaucracy of state government - along with all of the tax dollars that flow to private industry as a result of state contracts - to function in service of working people and not billionaires and special interests, for whom too much of our New York money has been moving for too long. 

I am running to bring real change statewide and to make sure the most powerful office too few New Yorkers have ever heard of actually delivers for them.

I am the only candidate in this race with actual experience in affordable housing, renewable energy, and large-scale infrastructure delivery — and the only one who has put affordable housing at the center of the campaign, advancing a specific, detailed plan (bit.ly/newyorkhousingplan) – the largest affordable housing fund in the United States – to use the Comptroller's investment and audit powers to build more housing, cut costs, and deliver for working New Yorkers. 

Tom DiNapoli has held this office for 19 years without using its powers to meaningfully address New York's housing crisis, its affordability crisis, regulatory gridlock, or the billions being wasted on underperforming Wall Street managers. DiNapoli has the lowest favorability of any statewide officeholder and 64% of Democratic voters have no opinion of him despite nearly two decades in office. DiNapoli is in his 70s and won his first election in 1972 – and now is seeking a record sixth term for the State Comptroller’s Office. There has never been a better moment for a change candidate to run against an entrenched incumbent like this.

Our campaign has the resources to compete and win. I have raised more individual contributions than any other candidate in this race, including DiNapoli, and have qualified for New York State's new public matching funds program, giving us access to $3.5 million. We filed 34,683 petition signatures – nearly 2.5 times the required number – first in the race to do so. The 2026 environment, with competitive congressional primaries generating enormous progressive energy across the state, provides a powerful tailwind for a change candidate at this moment. The grassroots energy behind this campaign is real, it is statewide, and it is growing.

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The Comptroller's audit authority is one of the most powerful and underused tools in state government, and I intend to use it directly in service of delivery. That means auditing state agencies to identify where procurement rules, staffing constraints, and bureaucratic processes are adding cost and time without adding value. It also means using the Comptroller's bully pulpit to push the Legislature and Governor to modernize the systems that are slowing New York down. 

I am the only candidate in this race who has run procurement processes in large government agencies, in the private sector, and at the largest affordable housing nonprofit in the United States. I am the only candidate who has ever had to permit infrastructure in New York. I have spent my career delivering complex projects. I helped lead the Port Authority — an agency with a $20 billion capital plan — through one of its most complex delivery challenges: reviving the rebuilding of the World Trade Center after years of bureaucratic gridlock. 

I know from firsthand experience that the difference between a project that gets built and one that doesn't is often not money but process. New York has to get serious about delivery, and the Comptroller can be a powerful voice for that.

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Housing is the issue that drove me to run for Comptroller – and it is where I am most differentiated from every other candidate in this race. I am the only candidate who ran an affordable housing organization that raised and deployed $2 billion of capital each year to build and preserve homes New Yorkers could actually afford. I spent five years as co-CEO of Enterprise Community Partners, the largest affordable housing nonprofit in the country, and I watched firsthand as the state's most powerful financial office sat on nearly $300 billion while New York became the 46th least affordable state in the nation.

My $20 billion Affordable Housing Investment Fund — the largest of its kind in the United States — will invest pension capital in new construction and preservation of permanently affordable homes, earning a risk-adjusted return that exceeds the pension fund's own 5.9% target. 

But investment alone is not enough. I will use the Comptroller's audit authority to attack the building code as the silent killer of affordable housing — proposing a model code that we estimate will strip 15% out of construction costs through common-sense reforms like single staircase standards, affordable elevators, and right-sized water pipes. We will perform a detailed, tracked-changes comparison from the current code to each proposed update so officials understand precisely what needs to change. New York doesn't need a new program. It needs a Comptroller willing to use the powers and money it already has, with the urgency and real-world experience to actually deliver

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I noted “other” on the question of eliminating free parking and increasing parking costs. How New York City manages its curb space and parking should reflect the reality that our streets need to work for everyone – cyclists, pedestrians, delivery workers, transit riders, and yes, drivers too. I am supportive of the Mamdani administration's approach through the new Office of Curb Management: modernizing how the city uses curb space, improving safety, reducing double parking, and better managing competing demands. On the broader question of parking pricing, I believe any changes must be part of a comprehensive approach that is clear about the impact on working New Yorkers – particularly outer-borough residents who depend on cars – and that generates revenue transparently reinvested in transit and street safety improvements. This is not a question that should be answered with ideology. It should be answered with evidence about what actually makes our streets safer and more equitable for all New Yorkers.

My experience helping to run  The Port Authority gave me direct exposure to the complexity and cost of large-scale transit infrastructure — and a deep appreciation for how dysfunction and process can turn a good project into an expensive, delayed one. As Comptroller, I will audit the MTA and all transit-related funds to ensure congestion pricing revenues and other dedicated transit dollars are fully protected and reinvested in reliable, affordable service. 

I would start with an audit of past MTA audits, creating a scorecard of which recommendations have actually been implemented, because accountability requires follow-through, not just findings. I think the idea of going into the MTA on Day 1 and launching an entirely new audit is misplaced. We first need an audit of the audits. We do not have a shortage of MTA audits – we have a shortage of visibility as to what has actually been implemented, what has worked, what hasn’t, etc. 

​​In addition, I plan to partner with New York City Comptroller Mark Levine on aspects of MTA oversight that are inextricably linked with the city, bringing our combined audit and fiscal authority to bear on one of New York's most complex and consequential institutions.

Having worked in the largest transit agency second only to the MTA, I understand that New York's transit system is foundational to our ability to build a more affordable, livable city, and the Comptroller can and should not just be a watchdog that ensures every dollar spent on transit is delivering real value, but help bring innovations to bear from across the world as part of its recommendations and findings.

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Lastly, I noted “other” for Nuclear as I am deeply skeptical of nuclear as the silver bullet for our electricity needs. I have yet to see any evidence that the United States is capable of building nuclear at scale that is remotely cost effective, much less to execute those things in New York. The most recent nuclear power station to come online was years delayed and exponentially over budget. I frankly believe the attention nuclear has gotten is disproportionate to the near-term benefit it could deliver (and shows the dearth of more practical, actionable ideas at the state level), and more focus, scrutiny and investment should be spent on far more cheaper, proven technology implementation both on the energy supply side and demand side management. To say nothing of the transmission upgrades that would be required to wheel this nuclear power if it were ever to be placed in service in a time frame and within a cost structure that makes sense. I realize this may not be the most popular answer with some, but it is a realistic one and it is one born from actual experience in the power industry and working inside the context of NY’s regulatory framework and wholesale power markets.

I am the only candidate in this race who has actually built clean energy infrastructure at scale. I led a national community solar business, putting more than $1 billion of steel in the ground and powering 400,000 homes with clean energy — building an industry from scratch while navigating complex financial, regulatory, and permitting environments. 

I know firsthand that the barriers to solar deployment are often not technical or financial — they are regulatory and bureaucratic. As Comptroller, I will fully divest the state pension fund from fossil fuels across all asset classes — a move our own analysis shows would have earned the fund a 5.4% higher rate of return over the past 19 years. I will also use the audit authority of the office to hold the Public Service Commission and the Department of Public Service accountable for meeting emissions targets and protecting ratepayers from unjustified utility rate increases. While the PSC and DPS rightly get a lot of attention, given my unique understanding of this industry, I would also approach NYSERDA and NYPA with a degree of skepticism that I believe is healthy. While both organizations are fairly well regarded, as an experienced counterparty to both, I understand firsthand where some of the gaps are in both substance and culture, and think there is a lot of value we can add there.

And please look out for my coming op-ed on how I believe we can use this offer to directly lower electricity bills while continuing to finance the grid modernization we need.

The rebuilding of the World Trade Center is the clearest example from my record. When I joined The Port Authority as Chief of Staff, the project had been stalled for years by bureaucratic gridlock, jurisdictional disputes, and competing powerful interests. No one was delivering. I helped bring people together across levels of government, cut through the dysfunction, and drove the project forward — transforming what had become a symbol of New York's inability to get things done into a symbol of its resilience. The lesson I took from that experience is one I apply to everything: the obstacles to delivery are almost never technical. They are political, bureaucratic, organizational, and cultural. And the job of leadership is to address those factors head on.

In addition, I think my experience developing community solar speaks directly to the Abundance agenda. I did not just build solar projects – I helped create the regulatory and financial architecture that made community solar possible as an industry. That meant working with state regulators to design virtual net metering frameworks, developing financing structures that had never existed before, and convincing institutional investors to back an unproven model. Every home now powered by community solar in New York traces a line back to that work. 

More recently, as co-CEO of Enterprise Community Partners, I led efforts to audit and reform building codes that were driving up construction costs for affordable housing — working with developers, architects, and local governments to identify specific code provisions that added cost without adding safety value. That work directly informed the building code audit proposal that is now a centerpiece of my Comptroller campaign.

I know what it takes to build something new from scratch in the face of entrenched opposition, and I will bring that same approach to the Comptroller's office.

1.Solve the affordable housing crisis and get out of bad investments. I will launch the largest affordable housing fund in the United States, investing $20 billion from the state pension fund to build and preserve 200,000 permanently affordable homes for working New Yorkers, including supportive housing for vulnerable populations. A fund that will be tenant-centered, run by a strict, transparent, and competitive process, invested equitably throughout the state, and that will prioritize permanent affordability. At the same time, I will divest from bad investments that have no place in our pension fund: ICE-enabler Palantir, fossil fuels, and high concentrations of foreign government bonds.

2. End the "DiNapoli Tax" and make government work for working people. For nearly two decades, Comptroller DiNapoli has paid $11.3 billion in taxpayer-funded fees to 664 Wall Street managers who underperformed their own benchmarks by 39%, costing New Yorkers $59.1 billion in higher property and income taxes. I will fire the underperforming Wall Street middlemen, shift to a smarter diversified index-based strategy, and put that money back in New Yorkers' pockets. I will also automatically return the $20 billion sitting in the Unclaimed Fund that belongs to New Yorkers — no delays, no excuses.

3. Use the audit power of this office far more aggressively than it has ever been used. The Comptroller's audit authority is one of the most powerful and underused tools in state government. I will audit the building code to cut 15% of construction costs. I will audit electricity rates and hold utility monopolies accountable for unjustified increases hitting working families. I will audit the health insurance and housing insurance industries to expose where costs are being driven up by corporate practices rather than actual risk. I will audit the MTA – and publish a public scorecard of which past recommendations have actually been implemented. And I will audit every county and municipality cooperating with ICE. The audit power exists. I will use it.

I reject the false choice between fiduciary duty and social priorities. The evidence shows they are aligned, not in tension. Our analysis of the pension fund's fossil fuel investments found that they cost the fund $15.1 billion in lost value over 19 years — meaning divestment would have been both the financially prudent and the environmentally responsible choice. The same logic applies to housing: investing $20 billion from the pension fund in affordable housing construction and preservation is not a concession to social priorities at the expense of returns — it is a smart investment in an asset class with strong risk-adjusted returns (higher than the published 5.9% “target return” of the fund today) that the fund has been dramatically underweight in while overweight in expensive, underperforming private equity and hedge funds. The current Comptroller has paid $11.3 billion in fees to 664 Wall Street managers who underperformed their own benchmarks by 39%. That is what a failure of fiduciary duty actually looks like. My approach starts with the evidence: what does the data say about risk-adjusted returns? In case after case, the data supports the investments that also happen to be good for New York, and I will be aggressive in making that case.