Speaker Julie Menin is quite wealthy

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani still owns land in Uganda. New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams owned cryptocurrency. And New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin is still rich. 

New financial disclosures released by the city’s Conflicts of Interest Board on Monday provide some new – though still quite limited – information about city elected officials’ investments and other financial information. 

The report does reveal that Menin is the beneficiary of two trusts, each with a value of $500,000 or more – something that hadn’t been included in her disclosure for 2024. According to a spokesperson for the speaker’s office, she’d been instructed by the Office of General Counsel to “file an updated financial disclosure reflecting the reporting requirements around inheritance” after the recent passing of her father. The amended filing also includes a variety of bonds from entities like the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the Long Island Power Authority, the New York State Thruway Authority, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority. The reported value for each ranged from $5,000 to $55,000. 

Menin also reported covering her own airfare and hotel fare for a trip she took to the Dominican Republic last summer with Catholic and Jewish faith leaders. She reported receiving one gift from that trip: Group dinners which District Council 37 Executive Director Henry Garrido paid a combined $100 for.

Unlike Mayor Zohran Mamdani and some of her predecessors, Menin didn’t release her personal tax return this year – a decision she said was based on the fact that there was no “established precedent” for speakers doing so. She’s faced repeated scrutiny for her immense wealth, especially early in budget negotiations when the mayor pressured her to join his calls for Gov. Kathy Hochul to raise taxes on the rich. Beyond her late father’s wealth, Menin’s husband is the co-founder of a real estate development firm with business around the country. 

The disclosure doesn’t give a complete picture of her wealth. Elected officials are only required to disclose certain things like investments, gifts and stocks. The rules don’t apply to officials’ primary and secondary residences, the amount in their checking account, cars, or non-invested savings.  

Mamdani’s annual disclosure, also released on Monday, didn’t hold much new insight. His report for 2025 largely matched that of 2024, though it noted an income bump in his rap career royalties (as previously reported in his tax return, he made $2,717 in foreign and domestic royalties last year) and confirmed that his 2025 mayoral transition committee paid for both his trip to the annual Somos conference in Puerto Rico and a trip to meet with President Donald Trump in Washington D.C.

City Comptroller Mark Levine, who also hasn’t released his tax return this year, disclosed in his latest COIB report a handful of investments including a retirement account worth between $100,000 and $250,000, as well as a mutual fund investment worth between $5,000 and $55,000, and an information technology exchange-traded fund worth between $1,000 and $5,000.

New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, who requested an extension on his taxes this year, reported a decline in his rental income on a Brooklyn home he owned following its foreclosure. 

Williams, who was a vocal proponent of a proof-of-work cryptocurrency mining moratorium in 2022, also held between $1,000 and $5,000 in cryptocurrency, which first showed up on his COIB disclosure in 2024. A spokesperson said he chose to buy Ethereum because it is mined with a less environmentally demanding method, and he has since sold it.