Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani is expected Wednesday to name Julia Kerson, an infrastructure adviser to Gov. Hochul, as his top operations deputy at City Hall, sources told the Daily News.
Additionally, Mamdani is expected to announce his Department of Transportation commissioner on Wednesday, and several sources said a favorite for the post is Mike Flynn, a veteran transit expert who used to work in the agency, the sources said.
The hires were expected to be announced as early as Wednesday afternoon at a press conference in Manhattan where Mamdani is also set to name Kamar Samuels as his schools chancellor.
Mamdani spokeswomen didn’t immediately return requests for comment. Kerson couldn’t immediately be reached for comment, and Flynn, who has served on the Mamdani transition team’s transportation committee, didn’t return messages.
The picks come as Mamdani’s expected to be sworn in as the city’s 112th mayor at midnight Wednesday.
The schools chancellor, deputy mayor for operations and Department of Transportation commissioner picks are among the most high-profile appointments in city government, making the 11th hour nature of Mamdani’s selections particularly nail-biting.
The DOT and deputy mayor for operations appointments are also uniquely important for Mamdani, who promised during the mayoral campaign to make the city’s public buses fast and free.
While the buses themselves are controlled by the state-run Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the Department of Transportation — which is overseen by the deputy mayor for operations — is responsible for the city’s streets, including the construction of busways meant to make public transit faster.
Busway construction has fallen short of mandated thresholds under outgoing Mayor Adams’ administration, and Mamdani vowed on the campaign trail to turn the tide on that trend.
In Kerson and Flynn, Mamdani is signaling he will lean on veteran infrastructure and transit hands to help him implement his agenda.
Kerson has served as the deputy director of infrastructure under Hochul since April 2024. Prior to Hochul’s administration, she worked at the MTA in a senior role and, before that, served in a variety of posts in the office of the deputy mayor for operations in the de Blasio administration.
Flynn is also a veteran of the agency he could now be in line to lead, having worked as the Department of Transportation in a variety of capacities, mostly under ex-Mayor Michael Bloomberg, leaving the agency in June 2014 as its director of capital planning. Since then, he has been working in various senior roles at TYLin, a global engineering and infrastructure advisory firm that works with both public and private sector players.
