Mamdani taps Queens-raised official to lead budget office

Sherif Soliman, who was raised in Queens, will serve as the city’s next director of the Mayor’s Office of Management and Budget, Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani announced on Thursday.  Photo via CUNY

By Jacob Kaye

A Queens-raised official who manages the City University of New York’s finances was tapped by Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani to serve as the director of the Mayor’s Office of Management and Budget on Thursday.

Sherif Soliman, who spent most of his childhood in Pomonok, will lead the mayor’s budget office when Mamdani is officially sworn in as mayor at the start of January.

Soliman, who most recently worked as the senior vice chancellor and chief financial officer of the City University of New York, will be tasked with figuring out how to finance Mamdani’s ambitious agenda. He’ll also face the challenge of balancing a budget with a $2.18 billion shortfall created by the Adams administration during their final months in office and the potential of major funding cuts from the federal government.

Nonetheless, Mamdani and Soliman, who has served under the past three mayoral administrations, appeared confident that the appointee will be able to ensure a healthy city budget in the coming years.

“[Soliman] boasts a record of transformative leadership that has measurably improved the lives of New Yorkers and that will allow him to deliver from City Hall on day one,” Mamdani said from the Pomonok Houses in Queens on Thursday.

Soliman, who has spent around three decades working in public service jobs, comes to City Hall directly from CUNY, where he worked to stabilize the university system’s finances in the wake of the pandemic. CUNY has a budget of roughly $5 billion.

Prior to his time at the school system, he worked as chief policy and delivery officer director in the Office of Planning under Mayor Eric Adams.

Soliman also served in several roles under Mayor Bill de Blasio, including as the commissioner of the New York City Department of Finance.

His time in City Hall goes back further. He also served as a legislative representative under Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

“I am humbled by the trust Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani has placed in me to take on this important role and work alongside the team to deliver on the affordability agenda,” Soliman said in a statement. “Budgets reflect the values of an administration — they are about innovation and excellence in government. I look forward to the work ahead in building a budget that delivers real wins for working New Yorkers.”

While Soliman, the son of Egyptian immigrants, will assume control over the city’s nearly $116 billion budget, CUNY officials said on Thursday that he will be missed.

“New York City will be extraordinarily well served by Sherif’s deep expertise, steady leadership and unwavering commitment to effective public service,” CUNY Chancellor Félix V. Matos Rodríguez said in a statement. “During his time at CUNY, Sherif has been an indispensable leader, serving as senior vice chancellor for budget and finance and chief financial officer. He has overseen the management of billions of dollars in state and city operating funds and tuition revenue, strengthened CUNY’s financial controls by reducing our structural deficit and modernized key business operations across our 26 colleges.”

“I thank Sherif for his outstanding service to CUNY and wish him every success in this important new role,” he added. “We are proud that once again, one of our senior leaders is being called to serve the people of New York City at the highest level.”

While Soliman was lauded for his efforts to correct CUNY’s finances, he’ll face a challenge at City Hall. There he’ll be tasked with working to create the Department of Community Safety, which is expected to cost $1 billion. He’ll also have to work to budget for Mamdani’s key campaign promises – free bus service, which is expected to cost around $800 million per year, and free childcare, which is expected to cost $6 billion a year.

“We are excited about the opportunity to tackle an affordability crisis that has persisted and has strained households for far too long,” Soliman said. “To be sure we will need help to get there and I look forward to joining ongoing conversations with our government partners on how to achieve the affordability agenda together in common purpose.”

Soliman joins a small but growing group of appointees tapped to serve in the administration, which will take over City Hall in less than two weeks.

Last month, Mamdani appointed City Hall veteran Dean Fuleihan to serve as his first deputy mayor and Elle Bisgaard-Church, his longtime chief of staff, to continue in that role.

On Wednesday, he named District Council 37 official Jahmila Edwards as his director of intergovernmental affairs and Catherine Almonte Da Costa as his director of appointments.

Da Costa’s own appointment was short lived. She resigned from the post on Thursday afternoon after a number of antisemetic tweets she wrote as a teenager were resurfaced by the Anti-Defamation League.

She called Jews “money hungry” in one 2011 post and called a train in Far Rockaway the “Jew train” in another.

“I spoke with the mayor-elect this afternoon, apologized, and expressed my deep regret for my past statements,” Da Costa said in a statement. “These statements are not indicative of who I am. As the mother of Jewish children, I feel a profound sense of sadness and remorse at the harm these words have caused. As this has become a distraction from the work at hand, I have offered my resignation.”

Mamdani accepted the resignation and said his transition team was not aware of the tweets at the time of Da Costa’s hiring.