New powers fell by nearly half after 2021 while new duties held steady
Duties and powers in local laws enacted each year, 2014 through August 2026. Each panel has its own scale. Dashed lines mark the 2014–2021 and 2022–2025 annual averages.
Source: NYCuriosity Obligations tracker and Powers tracker.
Note: *2026 covers laws enacted through August 31. Ten duties with no enactment date are excluded.
From 2014 to 2021 the Council granted 62 powers a year on average. From 2022 to 2025 it granted 33, while new duties rose from 560 a year to 605.
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.