NEW YORK (BLOOMBERG) -- New York City is hiring dozens of sophisticated sleuths to sift companies’ own data for evidence that they might be ripping off consumers.
Sam Levine, commissioner of the city’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, is building a 36-person bureau of data scientists, technologists and economists who will extract and analyze what he describes as “billions of records” to help New York City build cases against predatory corporations and practices.
The new unit is the latest sign of the aggressive posture the agency, which has oversight of business licensing and regulation, consumer protection enforcement and labor standards, has adopted under Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration. Levine, a 40-year-old former Federal Trade Commission attorney, is seeking to position himself as a muscular regulator after the Trump administration gutted the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and retreated from the aggressive antitrust policies pursued by Levine’s former boss, Biden administration FTC Commissioner Lina Khan.
“I think there’s a recognition here, and, I hope, among other cities, that the cavalry isn’t going to come and save us,” he said. “Washington is not going to come and save us. States are not necessarily going to come and save us.”
The new group, the formally called the Research and Analytics Division, will be charged with tracking firings driven by algorithms, surveillance pricing, and violations of the city’s wage and scheduling laws. The aim is to use the technology revolutionizing the private sector and the economy to move faster and take on more complicated investigations.
Levine said that the group would probe behavior such as ride-hailing companies quoting different prices for the same exact trip to different customers.
“They assume that’s just how things are. That’s just how the world works, and there’s nothing we can do about it,” Levine said. “We’re actually going to be the agency that’s going to be able to look under the hood, understand how companies are setting their prices, understand how companies are setting their wages, and attack the everyday indignities consumers and workers face that many of us just feel resigned to.”
If companies are acting in violation of city rules, DCWP can issue subpoenas, levy fines and partner with law enforcement to prosecute offenders.
Some staffers forming the core of the new bureau were hired under former Mayor Eric Adams and have had their work tested. Data scientists who will be part of the new bureau helped design the city rule setting a $23 an hour minimum pay requirement for delivery app workers, then successfully defended that number against the app companies’ own experts in court in 2023.
The bureau’s economists will also produce their own research, countering a pattern of industries controlling studies that Levine said he observed during his time running the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. City-funded research would be a “powerful countervailing force against so much of the junk research that corporate America is putting out.”
A specialized unit designed to analyze companies’ increasingly sophisticated data could address emergent areas of concern for lawyers and consumer protection agencies, said Prentiss Cox, a professor at the University of Minnesota’s Law School specializing in consumer protection law.
“The world is shifting,” Cox said. “The essence of consumer protection problems are where complexity meets money.”
Active Agency
Mamdani allocated $4 million for the bureau earlier this year. Levine has hired nine data scientists and researchers so far, and said the unit will be fully operational by October 2027. The salary range for a senior data scientist is between $98,000 and 129,000, according to a job posting.
The 400-person department, formerly known as the Department of Consumer Affairs, has been among the most visibly active of the city’s more than 100 agencies.
Within days of Mamdani’s inauguration, he and Levine launched a task force targeting junk fees and barred hotel “destination” charges. DCWP has since opened a restitution fund following a settlement with a self-storage company over deceptive advertising, issued new debt collection rules, and mandated “click to cancel” subscription rules.
While some of those initiatives were in progress under former Mayor Eric Adams, the agency’s prominence in Mamdani’s administration, and its open focus on corporate accountability, marks a significant tonal shift.
The agency’s aggressive new posture has been met with pushback from some business groups.
Last month, all five of the city’s chambers of commerce issued a joint statement criticizing a new agency rule that would require businesses to post an “all-in price” for goods or services. In a client memo, law firm Gibson Dunn accused the agency of mission creep.
“DCWP is pushing its enforcement philosophy closer to that of a federal regulator than a traditional municipal agency,” the memo said.
Khan has maintained close ties with the Mamdani administration. She helped advise Mamdani’s transition before he took office, and earlier this year, Mamdani named her chair of the city Economic Development Corporation’s Board of Directors.
“Protecting people from corporate abuse in today’s economy requires technological sophistication and expertise,” Khan said in a statement. “Hiring technologists and data analysts at the FTC turbocharged our work. DCWP’s new unit should be a model for cities and states across the country.”
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