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Duties per Power by Agency

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data.nycuriosity.com › Legislation Trackers Update › Duties per Power by Agency
Substack post September 2026

Duties per power, by agency

The Council writes two kinds of provisions into local law: duties, which an agency must carry out, and powers, which it may use. This chart compares the two for the ten agencies granted the most powers since 2014.

The Council gives DOT 14 duties for every power, and DCWP three

Duties per power for the ten agencies granted the most powers in local laws enacted February 2014 to August 2026. Counts at right.

Source: NYCuriosity Powers tracker and Obligations tracker, local laws enacted Feb 2014 to Aug 2026. Note: The Office of the Mayor groups many mayoral offices. Provisions that name no agency (506 duties, 23 powers) are excluded.

DCWP and DOB, the city's main licensing and enforcement agencies, receive one power for every three to four duties, most of it rulemaking and inspection authority. DOT receives one power for every 14 duties.

Method: Each provision of every local law enacted since 2014 is extracted with Claude (Anthropic's Haiku model) and sorted as a duty or a power by the model's label and by a fixed rule in code. Counts as of September 24 2026. Full methodology.