This targeted enforcement is the work of the city’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, now led by Sam Levine, who until last year was the director of the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. Levine’s move from Washington to New York City hall represents a deliberate test of a political hypothesis: that aggressive regulatory action, typically the domain of federal and state governments, can be effectively wielded at the municipal level to address a dominant voter concern, the cost of living.
His early targets in the city have included tow truck operators accused of illegal towing, firms making deceptive "free" service claims, and companies being audited for labor law compliance. These actions form a key plank in the "affordability" platform of the city’s Democratic Mayor, Zohran Mamdani. The political stakes extend beyond city limits, as the response from both businesses and the public could influence how Democrats nationwide campaign on economic issues.
Levine’s shift to local government coincides with the dismantling of the Biden administration’s consumer protection agenda by President Donald Trump. In New York, he operates with a fraction of the budget and none of the national jurisdiction he commanded at the FTC, where he secured the agency’s largest-ever children’s privacy settlement and won at least $500 million in judgments targeting junk fees.
A Record of Aggressive Federal Action
At the FTC, a tenure that spanned the end of the Obama administration through the Biden presidency, Levine developed a reputation for reviving long-dormant legal powers. Former colleagues and observers note he pursued violations previous administrations overlooked. His initiatives led to the FTC’s first-ever order banning a company’s use of facial recognition software and introduced new rules to combat deceptive subscription practices.
"When I arrived at the FTC in 2016, it wasn't taking on the biggest challenge people were facing," Levine said in an interview. "We changed that at the FTC. We started taking on much larger systemic problems." This philosophy of confronting broad, systemic issues is now being applied block by block in New York.
The central question of Levine’s experiment is whether a city agency, with its inherently narrower focus, can deliver the tangible results needed to validate a political "affordability" agenda. Success would provide a blueprint for other urban centers, while failure could underscore the limits of local power in a complex national economy.
For now, the enforcement actions continue, signaling a city government intent on flexing its regulatory muscle. Whether this approach can meaningfully alter the economic pressures on New Yorkers, and inspire similar strategies elsewhere, will be a defining measure of both the policy and the politics in the months ahead.
