Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s first executive budget proposal pulls off what seems to be a fiscal miracle by closing what in December was projected to be a huge $12 billion budget gap without raising property taxes, dipping into reserves or cutting services.

But the budget is hardly a symbol of fiscal rectitude. It relies on billions of dollars in one-shot or short-term money to fund permanent programs, it stretches out pension payments so the next generation will pay for the retirements of present-day workers and it projects a $7 billion deficit for the 2028 fiscal year that will need to be closed just one year from now.

One sign of the problem: The mayor did not mention the deficits in future budgets in his presentation Tuesday of the $124.7 billion budget. Fiscal experts say they do not remember a time when a mayor didn’t acknowledge future year problems.

“Unlike pickles, budget balancing strategies aren’t good when they are half sour,” said Andrew Rein, president of the Citizens Budget Commission.

The executive budget is the penultimate step in the city’s budget process and kicks off negotiations with the City Council with a final budget agreement due by June 30. 

Historically, the Council adds money to the budget, usually about $500 million each year, but the mayor appears to be trying to avoid that by increasing money for parks, libraries and CUNY, which are usually the top of the council’s priority list.

The mayor was able to close the budget deficit because Gov. Kathy Hochul both provided billions of dollars in additional funds — including authorizing a new pied-à-terre tax  on luxury second homes — and delayed a costly mandate for the city to reduce class sizes.

Much of the money is short-term. 

For example, the governor has promised $1.6 billion for only the first two years of the rollout of Pre-K for three-year-olds and expansion of the slots for four-year-olds. There is no money for future years when the program is expected to be growing rapidly.

Other so-called one-shots — meaning revenue for only one year is being used to support spending that is expected to continue in the future — include something called budget accruals.

The administration says it’s found $1.2 billion in money the city had set aside to pay old expenses that it won’t need to use for that purpose. The money will be used in 2027 to balance the budget — but it won’t be available in future years.

One-shots amount to $2.8 billion, Comptroller Mark Levine estimates, one major factor in why the budget deficit for the 2028 fiscal year is still so large.

The savings for delaying pension payments is particularly egregious for people who care about best budget practices. Unlike the state, whose pension system is fully funded because it makes the required payments each year, the city needs to deposit extra money each year to make up for years when it did not fully meet its obligations.

The pension deal agreed to by the mayor and the governor evens out volatile annual payments to allow more predictable budgeting. But it also stretches those extra payments out into the future, saving $2.3 billion in next year’s budget.

“Extending the amortization period for pension payments creates a debt that’s more expensive than muni bonds,” William Glasgall, an expert in public finances at the Volcker Alliance, said, referring to municipal bonds. Taxpayers will be footing the bill for today’s savings well into the 2030s.

What this budget does by relying on short-term fixes is set up yet another push for the mayor’s campaign promises to tax the rich next year, after the mid-term elections. 

Hochul is up for reelection in November, while the local impact of President Donald Trump’s signature tax bill will really start hitting home in 2027.

“We have known ever since the child care funding announcement that we will need future revenues,” said Emily Eisner, interim director of the progressive Fiscal Policy Institute, which has been aggressively supporting tax increases. “The governor is interested in avoiding taxes in a significant way before November but they are more likely after the election, especially since the major strains from the One Big Beautiful Bill don’t hit until next year.”

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Mayor Zohran Mamdani dropped his threat to hike property taxes as a way to close the budget gap after Gov. Kathy Hochul promised additional aid for his $124.5 billion spending plan.

The city budget includes an additional $4 billion in support to close the gap, totaling nearly $8 billion over two years.

That money is through $352 million in direct aid, $3.2 billion from programs that require state authorization and $500 million in new revenue — enough to close the $12 billion budget gap for the next two fiscal years that Mamdani inherited from his predecessor.

“I am proud to announce that we have closed the gap entirely, down to zero,” the mayor said at a press conference Tuesday.

“It hasn’t been easy but we have balanced the budget and we have done so without placing the burden on the backs of working New Yorkers.”

The mayor thanked Hochul, State Senate Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, State Assembly Majority Carl Heastie and Council Speaker Julie Menin for their help and partnership, along with “the movement that carried us to City Hall.”

The budget, he said, “is evidence of a new era of government in our city, one that can balance both ambition and fiscal responsibility.”

The mayor’s budget manages to close a $5.6 billion shortfall for this fiscal year and an estimated $7 billion gap for next year without new income taxes for the wealthy and for corporations that he had demanded from Albany, and without raiding the city’s financial reserves. 

Jabs at the Wealthy

But Mamdani said they are taxing the rich through other changes, like a pied-à-terre tax on luxury second homes that is estimated to bring in $500 million in new revenue. 

There is also a proposal to reduce the Unincorporated Business Tax credit, known as UBT, which he noted mostly benefits millionaires. Reducing the tax credit will bring in an estimated $68 million, according to the mayor. 

“These are common sense measures,” he said. “Working New Yorkers cannot be asked to sacrifice as we sit in the wealthiest city in the wealthiest country in the history of the world.”

Pension Moves

Other revenue and savings comes from the state taking over expenses that shifted to the city years ago, like line of duty death benefits for families of first responders killed on the job, saving the city $202 million. There’s also an additional $600 million in youth programming and $300 million to restore money for sales tax intercepts.

The city will also seek state approval for pension amortization, which could save more than $2 billion by restructuring some payments over the next two years, which Mamdani assured wouldn’t affect benefits for current or retired city workers.

“I think there’s a logic to smoothing out payments,” city Comptroller Mark Levine said Tuesday morning after a budget briefing with the mayor and his team. 

“I think it’s easier to plan for the long term when you have a smooth payment schedule.”

More than $1 billion in savings comes through a delay in the state’s mandated cap on class sizes which would require hiring more teachers and administrators. Last year, the city approved hiring 3,700 more teachers and 100 more assistant principals.

Mamdani added more money to hire 1,000 additional teachers and $1.5 billion to the $7.6 billion existing budget for the School Construction Authority’s five-year capital plan.

The mayor is also working to rein in spending on some students whose private school tuition is paid for by the city when it’s found they can’t receive the same special education services at public schools. 

The cost of what’s known as “Carter” and “Connors” cases – depending on how the money is paid out – has increased 300% over the last decade, according to data obtained by Chalkbeat. Tuition costs can go as high as $144,000 per student.

To address this rising number of students, the Department of Education will invest more money in special education needs, like speech and occupational therapy, the mayor said.

Another major rising cost to the city’s budget is housing vouchers, specifically through the City Fighting Homelessness and Eviction Prevention Supplement, or FHEPS, program. 

The mayor is fighting a legal battle against implementing a package of laws the City Council passed in 2023 to expand eligibility for the vouchers. He promised to put the laws into effect as a candidate, but reversed once he took office due to budget pressures. 

Around 68,000 households rely on CityFHEPS vouchers, while another 47,000 could end up depending on the program if it’s expanded.

Mamdani plans to save $519 million within CityFHEPS, mostly through administrative changes, he said. 

The mayor announced new spending in his budget, including $40 million for the Office of Community Safety and $26 million towards hate crime prevention.

‘Conservative’ on New Spending

Levine, the comptroller, said there was a lot of “good news in this budget” but he was still cautious.

“We are entering into very uncertain economic times because of the threat of a recession and the impact of AI, and I want us to build a very strong fiscal foundation that grows reserves,” he said.

“There still is a reliance on a number of one-shot measures, and those are tools that are then going to be off the table next year. And we are looking at about a $7 billion shortfall for the following fiscal year.”

Levine did praise the mayor for his “pretty modest” additional spending.

Some of the additional money includes $31.7 million to the three library systems, $15 million to the Parks Department, $10 million to cultural organizations and $15 million to the City University of New York.

“It’s been a while since we’ve seen a mayor be this conservative on new spending,” Levine said about the spending. “It reflects why we’re in a better place today than we were in February.”

Mamdani had floated a property tax increase as a last-resort option to raise money to fill the gap, as Gov. Hochul continued to resist raising taxes.

Raising the property tax rate, which has not been done since Mayor Michael Bloomberg, is one of the few levers the mayor has to raise revenue. It was met with immediate backlash and was unlikely to pass in the Council. 

Hochul’s help to the city benefits the whole state, she said at an unrelated event Monday.

“He inherited a pretty significant financial mess,” Hochul said. 

Public Advocate Jumaane Williams took a cautious approach to the promised state aid.

“I think until that budget is passed, you don’t know if all that money is real,” he said following his briefing.

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Councilmember Vickie Paladino and the City Council settled their ethics feud over her anti-Muslim social media posts, with the Queens Republican agreeing to delete her tweets and remove any mention of her job on her personal accounts.

The charges filed March 2 by the Council’s ethics committee were permanently withdrawn, according to a court filing. In turn, Paladino withdrew a lawsuit she filed against the Council.

The Committee on Rules, Privileges, Elections, Standards and Ethics voted in early March to charge Paladino for social media posts she made after Zohran Mamdani was elected as the city’s first Muslim mayor, and a tweet she published after an ISIS-inspired terror attack at a Hanukkah celebration in Sydney, Australia.

In one now-deleted tweet, she posted that “we need to take very seriously the need to begin the expulsion of Muslims from western nations, or at the very least the severe sanction of them within western borders.” 

Under the settlement, Paladino will have to modify her account on X to remove “council woman” from her display name, and delete three tweets that are still up. 

Paladino will also have to make a public statement.

“To be clear, my personal social-media posts were not directed at any Council Member or staff,” she will be required to post. “I am responsible for the content, I never intended to make Council Members or staff feel unwelcome or unsafe in their work environment. I send a heartfelt ‘thank you’ to the court for facilitating this resolution.”

Councilmember Sandra Ung, the chair of the ethics committee, is also required to post that she believes “the resolution strikes the right balance between protection of council staff and the first amendment liberties of council members.”

Paladino was represented by Jim Walden, a failed 2025 mayoral candidate. He argued in at least one hearing that the tempest was a free speech issue, and provided examples of other Council members posting their own opinions about police officers or, in some cases, white people.

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Councilmember Shahana Hanif formally dropped her support of a bill that would ban 24-hour shifts for home health aides, and other council sponsors say they’ve proposed modifications to ensure people don’t lose crucial care. 

The loss of a co-sponsor for the “No More 24” bill comes as Council Speaker Julie Menin deferred a possible vote next week.

Menin hasn’t committed to bringing Introduction 303 to a vote when the Council meets May 14, according to a spokesperson who said it is moving through the legislative with no date set for a vote.

Those in favor of the bill say home health aides often work 24-hour shifts for disabled or elderly clients, but only get paid for 13 hours. Opponents say a lack of state funding for the bill’s requirement for two 12-hour shifts would harm people who require around-the-clock care.

Hanif (D-Brooklyn), who heads up the Council’s disability committee, chaired an oversight hearing Tuesday where she heard from disabled New Yorkers who spoke against the bill and urged her to take her name off as a sponsor. There are currently 17 co-sponsors.

“I hope it signals the seriousness required to move legislation impacting both workers and patients,” Hanif told THE CITY on Thursday.

Joseph Rappaport, executive director of the Brooklyn Center for Independence of the Disabled, praised Hanif’s decision and hoped others will follow.

“I think everybody realizes because this bill is flawed, and everybody also wants to make sure that these workers are protected,” he said. “I think people have figured out that if the bill went forward, some people will actually lose their jobs. Beyond that, people with disabilities will lose their coverage. Nobody wants that.”

A spokesperson for Councilmember Christopher Marte (D-Manhattan) said they were “hopeful that we can regain Councilmember Hanif’s support for this legislation and take seriously her point that this issue demands care and attention for both workers and patients.”

Other Council members told THE CITY they’ve pitched changes to make sure people who need the care get it, without workers being exploited. 

Councilmember Ty Hankerson (D-Queens) said he asked Marte to include an amendment that would let some workers get a waiver to work 24 hours. 

“I believe in the intent of the bill, 100% believe in the intent of the bill,” Hankerson said, adding that he would drop his support if the changes weren’t made. “I do think that there are some challenges that the bill presents that unfortunately on the council level we might not be able to solve.”

Councilmember Lincoln Restler (D-Brooklyn) said he’ll stay on as a sponsor but also wants changes.

Supporters of the bill, including elderly former home aides, camped outside of City Hall for weeks pushing Menin to bring it to a vote and for Mayor Zohran Mamdani to support it. 

Workers held a multi-day hunger strike before ending it after the speaker assured the bill would get a vote.

A spokesperson for Menin said she has “long fought for strong worker protections” and thinks more should be done to stop exploitation. 

“As part of the ongoing legislative process, the Council has updated the bill after many conversations with stakeholders,” the spokesperson said in a statement.

Though details of the Menin’s changes are not publicly available, POLITICO reported that the new version exempts union workers, delays its implementation for a year and allows home health workers to opt into longer shifts through the fall of 2027.

Vincent Cao, an organizer at the Chinese Staff and Workers’ Association, slammed Menin’s changes.

“We have fought for too long,” to allow people to continue working 24-hour shifts, he said. “It needs to end.”

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Disabled New Yorkers and disability advocates spoke out against a City Council bill that would ban 24-hour home care shifts, saying their own care will suffer. 

The bill, which was stalled in the Council, would replace the 24-hour shifts with 12-hour shifts performed by two separate workers.

But those who rely on the support of home health aides say the  proposed change — which has strong support from advocates for home health aides — would uproot their lives.

The “No More 24” bill has turned allies into opponents, pitting workers’ rights activists against disability advocates and those who need round-the-clock care. Both Gov. Kathy Hochul and Council Speaker Julie Menin reportedly still have questions about funding. 

Under the current home care system, health aides are required to spend 24 hours with a client even when they are paid for only 13 hours. Current rules allow for rest and meal breaks, but members of the largely immigrant workforce say they are often exploited and forced to work around the clock. 

The home care system is funded through the state, which has not budgeted for the increase in spending that would come from two 12-hour shifts by two fully paid workers. 

Jose Hernandez, a wheelchair user who has had home care aides for 31 years, interrupted Tuesday’s Council oversight hearing to speak out against the bill, saying he and others were being ignored.

“It scares me, as someone that was threatened to be placed in a nursing home when I was 16,” he said after he left the hearing. He receives around-the-clock care with home health aides like Bakary Sawo, who came with him to Tuesday’s hearing.

“I don’t want the people that look like me, that need home care like me, to be placed in institutions because [the city doesn’t] want to find a solution and do the hard work and work together with the disability community and the home care workers to ensure that a bill that supports both worker and patient is found.”

Hernandez and others urged Councilmember Shahana Hanif, the chair of the disability committee, to take her name off the bill, where she’s currently a co-sponsor. 

“There are some really bad conditions for home care workers, but the rules around living shouldn’t come at the cost of the safety and the well-being of people with disabilities,” he said.

Of the approximately 300,000 home care workers in New York City, about 8 to 10% work 24-hour shifts, according to the city Department of Consumer and Worker Protection.

At a Feb. 18 City Council hearing, DCWP external affairs director Carlos Ortiz said that the city supports the bill’s intent but that it has concerns that “prohibiting 24-hour shifts” without more Medicaid funding.

Supporters of the bill have rallied outside City Hall; several home care workers went on a week-long hunger strike last month to protest it being stalled.

They ended their hunger strike after an apparent deal to bring the bill to a vote — although its future is still uncertain. 

Evan Yankey, advocacy director at the Brooklyn Center for the Independence of the Disabled, testified that many people who receive 24-hour care are given it “through no choice of their own” in their managed care plan, and had no say in how their aides are compensated.

“Only an individual can appeal it, but it is a long process with hundreds of steps,” he said.

Under the proposed bill, agencies that still provide 24-hour care would be fined.

“Rather than face a fine, people will go without care, the home care industry will collapse, workers will lose jobs,” Yankey said. 

Looming Medicaid Work Requirements

Tuesday’s hearing focused on economic opportunities for the more than 1 million New Yorkers living with a disability. 

Nisha Agarwal, commissioner of the Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities, testified about her agency’s work in helping people find – and keep – jobs. 

“The core focus of our work is about jobs for people with disabilities – the dignity of their work, the independence that it could provide, and the ability to build a life in the city that we all love,” she said.

Recent data shows that just 40% of New Yorkers with disabilities of working age are employed, compared to 73% of the overall working age population, she said.

Upcoming federal Medicaid cuts also loomed over the agency, with uncertainty over who would ultimately be exempt from work requirements.

“It’s not clear because there’s no finite rule until June,” Agarwal said, saying she was unclear on how many people could be affected. 

“The people are nervous,” she said. “I’m nervous, everybody’s nervous.”

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They want to curb your dog.

The New York City Council on Thursday introduced a package of bills aimed at ending the scourge of dog poop that intensified during weeks of feces-strewn snow piles this winter.

The four bills, which will have hearings in the coming weeks, focused on both outreach and other ways to make it easier for dog owners to pick up after their four-legged friends.

Speaker Julie Menin reintroduced a bill she first proposed in 2024 that would require the sanitation department to regularly fill dog waste bag dispensers on or next to every public litter basket on city streets. 

“We know that dog waste is an enormous issue,” the speaker said before the bills were introduced. 

A spokesperson for the sanitation department, Vincent Gragnani, said the agency has previously made it clear it doesn’t have the resources to stock the bag dispensers.

“We need a community partner to maintain these. We don’t have the resources to keep these stocked daily, and our intention was that a local community group or the local Council member would take on the responsibility of keeping the dispensers full,” he said in an email to THE CITY.

Another bill introduced by Councilmember Harvey Epstein (D-Manhattan) would create a pilot program to compost dog waste left at dog runs.

“I’m a big composter in this city, I really focused on making sure we understand that we have the opportunity to reduce waste and do waste diversion,” he told THE CITY.

He takes his mutt, Homer, to local dog runs and isn’t able to compost the poo — which he said is a waste. 

“There’s a real opportunity to do something about ensuring that we divert that from trash and make it into compost,” he said. 

A handful of New York City dog runs have composting for dog feces, but it’s not universal. And it can’t be disposed of in regular brown compost bins and must instead go into the trash, a sanitation department spokesperson said.

Councilmember Mercedes Narcisse (D-Brooklyn) introduced a bill that would require signs posted at parks reminding people it’s illegal to not pick up after your dog. 

And another bill, from Brooklyn Democratic Councilmember Shahana Hanif, would create an educational initiative making sure New Yorkers know “it’s their duty” to pick up waste, she said. 

“It’s very important to understand that, as a dog guardian, if I leave the poop, I’m adding to the dangers and risks of a public health issue,” Hanif said.

She and other Council members spoke out on social media during winter storms when human owners didn’t pick up after their pets.

It’s illegal to not clean up after your dog. The city’s “Pooper Scooper” law was enacted in 1978, thanks in part to the advocacy of Fran Lee, a New Yorker who had become obsessed with the public health issue of dog waste. 

If caught, the fines are up to $250.

But it’s nearly impossible to ever catch anyone in the act, the city’s former acting sanitation commissioner admitted during budget testimony this year. 

“The chances of someone not picking up after their dog while an enforcement officer is watching is very, very slim,” Javier Lojan said, adding that they even set up stings to catch people in areas with a lot of complaints — and came up short.

They issued just two summonses for failure to remove canine waste last year, despite many complaints citywide.

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Carl Wilson is on track to win the special election to the City Council district representing the West Village, Chelsea, Hell’s Kitchen, and other parts of the west side of Manhattan on Tuesday, with a strong lead over Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s choice for the seat.

After one round of ranked-choice voting tabulations, Wilson led his closest rival, Lindsey Boylan, who rose to prominence as the first person to publicly accuse former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, her onetime boss, of sexual harassment, by a commanding 43% to 25%, with more than 93% of ballots counted. 

“I stand here tonight deeply honored to be your next Council member for District 3,” Wilson told jubilant supporters at his watch party at the bar Vers in Hell’s Kitchen.

Around 10 p.m., Boylan told supporters at the Chelsea Bell she had “called Carl to congratulate him on winning this race.” 

Council Speaker Julie Menin celebrated Wilson’s victory, which pitted Mamdani against the Manhattan Democratic establishment. “Tonight, we had a resounding victory by electing Carl Wilson as our next City Council Member,” Menin said in a social media post.

Election officials will keep counting ranked ballots until a candidate crosses 50% of votes.

Wilson will be sworn in to the City Council after the results are ratified, but will need to win the June 23 Democratic primary and the November general election in order to serve a full four-year term.

Wilson defeated Boylan despite her significant name recognition heading into the special election, which was declared when Councilmember Erik Bottcher vacated the seat in January upon his election to the state Senate. It was Boylan’s third run for office, after failed bids for Congress and Manhattan borough president in 2020 and 2021. Wilson had been Bottcher’s chief of staff.

The special election became a proxy war between the city’s democratic socialist faction, headed by Mayor Mamdani, and the Democratic establishment. 

Wilson was endorsed by all four of his immediate predecessors, including former Council speakers Christine Quinn and Corey Johnson, and several of the district’s political clubs.

Many of those same leaders despaired at the prospect of Boylan, a straight woman, representing a historically LGBTQ seat, one that is home to the Stonewall Inn, the cradle of the national gay rights movement. Like all four of his predecessors, Wilson is gay.

Wilson “built an unbelievable coalition,” Menin said. There was no immediate comment from the mayor.

A political action committee tied to Cuomo allies poured six-figure sums into ads attacking Boylan and supporting Wilson, her main opponent, New York Focus reported. (Cuomo has denied all accusations against him, by Boylan and other accusers.)

That group, Westside Progress, reported spending $144,500 starting last week on ads, texts and phone calls supporting Wilson.

“Don’t rank socialist Lindsey Boylan,” read one of the online ads, an apparent nod to her status as a dues-paying member of the Democratic Socialists of America, which did not endorse her.

Approximately 15,000 voters in the 3rd Council district cast their ballots, about half the amount that cast their ballots in the June 2025 mayoral primary. Still, turnout was high for a special election, where the number of ballots cast generally hovers below 10,000.

Under ranked choice voting, New Yorkers can select up to five candidates. If their top pick has the fewest first-choice votes, that candidate will be eliminated, and all of those votes are redistributed to second-choice picks. That process continues, until the winner has more than 50% of the remaining votes cast.

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Gov. Kathy Hochul on Tuesday shot down a request by Mayor Zohran Mamdani and City Council Speaker Julie Menin to change a tax credit to help fill a $5.4 billion city budget deficit.

Mamdani and Menin had asked state lawmakers to authorize changes to the pass-through entity tax, or PTET, which allows some business people to keep state and local tax deductions that were limited by a 2017 federal tax law. The mayor and speaker said the changes would generate an estimated $1 billion in revenue for the city.

But Hochul said she sees the proposed PTET cut as a personal tax increase. 

“That’s why it’s not happening,” she said at an unrelated event outside Albany. “We’re not changing PTET.”

Menin and Mamdani, appearing in the City Hall rotunda at their the first joint press conference since they began their contentious budget negotiations, also announced an extension of the city budget, which is due May 1, until May 12. The state budget, which was due April 1, is nearly a month late.

“A crisis of this scale cannot be solved without state action,” the mayor said. “Speaker Menin and I have already identified meaningful savings and we will continue that work carefully, deliberately and without cutting the services that New Yorkers rely on. But we cannot do it alone.”

Hochul took issue with that framing.

“What you’re doing is independent of our budget process,” she said. “We don’t have to be done in order for you to do yours. We’re on different timetables.” Cities and towns typically set their budgets after the state budget is completed, so they know how much aid they’ll be getting from Albany. 

“I think it’s crystal clear that we already have helped them,” Hochul said, pointing to $4 billion in assistance the state agreed to provide the city in this budget cycle, as well as the agreement for a new tax on luxury second homes in New York City.

Hochul, who is running for reelection this year, said Mamdani and Menin need “to do what every other city has had to do,” by looking at expenses and identifying the line items growing exponentially. 

To save money, Mamdani has floated holding off on mandates to shrink class sizes and is fighting a lawsuit that would require the city to expand its rental voucher system.

He and Menin also asked the legislature to allow the city to reduce planned payments to the city’s five pension funds that are being made to make up for years of underfunding.

“There is no amount of savings that will absolve Albany from the partnership that’s required to get all of us to a balanced budget by the end of this process,” Mamdani said.

Trump Tax Law Work-Around

The PTET was instituted after the 2017 Trump tax cuts that sharply limited the state and local tax deduction. States like New York allowed people who owned closely held businesses or partnerships to pay state and local income taxes directly from their businesses, preserving the full federal tax deduction.

The state and local income tax payments were the same as if they paid the tax on their personal returns, but their federal taxes would be lower. The Mamdani-Menin plan would amount to a state and local tax increase for those people. The leaders said the proposed PTET change, from a full credit to 75%, would be temporary, though they did not name a timeline.

Mamdani described the PTET as “essentially a loophole that allows high-income earners to reduce their federal tax burden.”

In addition to the PTET changes, Menin and Mamdani also called on Albany to restore state Aid and Incentives to Municipalities funding, which the state stopped during the Great Recession of 2007 to 2009. They said it would amount to about $400 million per year.

Hochul, however, threw cold water on that ask, too, saying the state provides AIM funding for municipalities with property tax caps — and New York City does not have such a cap.

Mayor and Speaker Aligned

Menin and Mamdani’s joint request marks a turning point for the duo, who had been in opposition as city budget negotiations took shape.

The Council slammed the mayor’s last-resort pitch in February to increase property taxes, which would require approval from the 51-member body.  

Mamdani later criticized the Council’s response to his preliminary budget, saying their savings plan – which filled a more than $5 billion deficit without taking from the city’s reserves, finding savings elsewhere – was “unrealistic.”

Still, on Tuesday, the two leaders struck the same note, emphasizing that New York City contributes over 55% of the state’s revenues but gets back 42% in return.

“Despite being the economic engine of the state, the city sends billions of dollars to Albany each year and sends more than it receives in return,” Menin said. “We must finally address this imbalance.”

Greg David and Katie Honan contributed reporting.

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At a recent press conference announcing a sweeping takedown of rival gangs notorious for their wild shootouts across public housing in Brownsville, Brooklyn, Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch made a point of praising the NYPD’s controversial gang database.

“Yes we certainly did use the criminal group database as part of this investigation,” Tisch said, using the department’s more ambiguous name for the gang list. Asserting that 60% of all shootings in the city have some nexus to gangs or crews, she said the database “remains a valuable tool in our efforts to keep New Yorkers safe.”

The police commissioner’s enthusiastic support stands in contrast to her boss’s feelings: as a candidate, Mayor Zohran Mamdani repeatedly called for terminating the database entirely, embracing the contention promoted by some criminal justice reform advocates that it targets Black and Hispanic teens and young men.

The mayor recently backed off from his call to pull the plug and now insists the database must be reformed.

While a blueprint for fixing the gang database has been around for years, an analysis by THE CITY found that the NYPD stiff-armed or slow-walked nearly a dozen reforms recommended by the city’s ethics watchdog to address allegations of racial bias.

The database is perhaps the most high profile of several areas where Mamdani and Tisch have dramatically different perspectives. In the past he’s vowed to end a crackdown on lower level quality of life crimes and to eliminate a unit known as the Strategic Response Group that’s been criticized for heavy-handed tactics during protests. Tisch supports both.

In two reports since 2023, the city Department of Investigation suggested 30 reforms aimed at ensuring that people aren’t placed in the gang database without sufficient reason and aren’t kept there when there’s no evidence of continuing gang affiliation.

First DOI recommended that cops provide a clearer explanation of the evidence they use to justify placing someone in the database, a process known as “activation.” And they suggested creating a system to continually review the police justifications and a process for individuals or their parents to appeal inclusion.

While the NYPD adopted some of DOI’s recommendations, with the implementation of several still pending, the department under then-Commissioner Keechant Sewell rejected five outright, including the appeals protocol and changes to how often justifications are reviewed and who gets to review them.

NYPD spokesperson Erika Tannor said the department “continues to work on this and has made very meaningful progress, which DOI itself has unequivocally acknowledged.”

Meanwhile, Tisch has consistently championed the database, calling it a critical weapon to reduce gun crime.

“When we have a shooting in the city, we use the gang database to anticipate where we may see retaliatory violence, and that has helped drive our gun violence down,” she said at a Jan. 6 press conference with Mamdani standing next to her.

A key aspect of that effort is tracking the conversations taking place on social media that document gang beatings and sometimes describe in specific detail a gang’s plan to seek revenge when a member is beaten or shot by a rival.

That was the case with the takedown of two Brownsville gangs Tisch and Brooklyn DA Eric Gonzalez announced April 15, when they unsealed indictments against 36 defendants ranging in age from 16 to 27 alleging felonies from murder to weapons possession.

The Brownsville investigation targeted a gang called WOOO and another called CHOO who for the last three years, prosecutors say, have engaged in a chaotic shooting war around several New York City Housing Authority developments. The grim score to date is 11 victims — including one homicide.

These battles created chaos. 

The DA played security video showing a 69-year-old man taking out his trash who was wounded when gunfire erupted. Another video showed children ducking and running as gang members opened fire across a playground. A cell phone video posted on social media depicted gang members beating up a rival in a plaza near Metrotech Center in downtown Brooklyn.

“This is life,” the poster is heard saying as the video captures his rival beaten and prostrate on the sidewalk.

Tisch noted that, “Of the 36 defendants, every single one of them was entered into that database.”

How It Works

The database consists of people — nearly all of them Black or Hispanic teenagers or young men — identified by law enforcement as gang members. The criteria to justify “activation” includes a subject “self-admitting” gang membership on social media or openly to police. Or, during an investigation, the individual is identified by two independent and reliable sources as a gang member. 

Until recently the department also factored in if the subject frequented “known gang locations,” flashed alleged gang hand signs or displayed gang-affiliated tattoos on social media.

David Sarni, a retired NYPD detective who is now an adjunct professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, described the database as a “tool that can help define motivations and relationships.”

The NYPD says monitoring social media chatter is particularly useful in identifying possible planned retaliation and ratcheting up police oversight of gang members making specific threats. 

As Michael Gerber, the deputy commissioner for legal matters, put it during a City Council hearing last year, “If we know from the database that a shooting victim is a gang member, the identities of rival gang members, and where those gangs are based, we can immediately deploy officers in a way that will help prevent retaliatory shootings.”

Sarni noted “activation” required at least two independent sources, and said the activation was supposed to be reviewed regularly to ensure there is evidence of ongoing gang affiliation. Individuals can then either be “renewed” or “deactivated” — that is, taken off the list.

For several years, cops could also see the names of people who had been “de-activated” but, Sarni said, “They stopped that. We don’t keep a person in the system for 50 years.” That modification was in response to DOI’s critiques.

Commissioner Tisch has asserted that information about gang affiliation stored in the database is not used to determine whether there is probable cause to arrest a person. It mainly helps detectives “determine who is involved and where retaliation is most likely to occur,” she has said.

While campaigning last year Mamdani had a very different view, labeling it a “vast dragnet of New Yorkers on the basis of whether they go out late, the photos they put on social media, so much of the facts of life of being a young New Yorker.”

Tattoos and Parades

Last spring the Legal Aid Society and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund filed suit in Brooklyn federal court calling the database racist and alleging it violates free speech, due process and equal protection sections of the Bill of Rights. In December a judge denied the city’s motion to toss the suit but also rejected the plaintiff’s move to declare it a class action on behalf of anyone placed in the database, limiting it to three men named as lead plaintiffs.

The suit alleges that 99% of those placed on the list are Black or Hispanic. And it says that mere placement in the database can be used as justification to stop and question people. 

Reviewing internal documents that detectives must fill out when proposing an individual for inclusion, Legal Aid said that cops have cited everything from “Mexican tattoos” to what they described as “cultural touchstones such as common gestures used by Black athletes” or “being present at the Puerto Rican Day parade.”

In the past, the list has included children as young as 11, the lawsuit says.

“It’s basically youth behaviour,” said Legal Aid staff attorney Rigodis Appling. “Youth culture is youth culture. If this were a white suburb doing these things, they would not be put on a gang database.” Juveniles make up 2.7% of the current database.

The Legal Aid Society, whose union urged Mamdani not to reappoint Tisch, says the database can’t be fixed  and that reforms the NYPD has claimed to have adopted are incremental and meaningless.

The Department of Investigation’s April 2023 and October 2025 reports on the database make clear the NYPD has moved slowly to adopt proposed fixes, rejecting some recommendations outright. 

The 2023 report submitted by NYPD Inspector General Jeanene Barrett to then-Police Commissioner Sewell examined what evidence the NYPD used to justify placing 493 people on the list and found the nature and documentation of individuals “self-admitting” to gang membership “varied widely.”

DOI noted that some social media postings cited to justify “activation” were “cursory, conclusory and failed to include sufficient detail to support” self-admission to a gang. Examples included cops relying on “certain emojis,” or “photos of individuals in the company of known gang members without more detail.” Some cops noted “social media content” with zero information on the nature of the content.

In 136 cases, cops “activated” individuals based on what they described as “two sources” but did not always “document the existence of two independent sources.” The report found cops in some cases simply designated entire Housing Authority developments as a “gang location.”

The NYPD under Commissioner Sewell agreed in principle to accept 11 recommendations, but rejected five outright, including drafting a written policy requiring all “activated” entries be reviewed every 12 months for teens under 18 and every 18 months for adults. The department said a review every two years for teens and every three years for adults was sufficient.

The NYPD also rejected DOI’s suggestion to create a panel to review all activations, and shot down a suggestion to create an appeals process for parents if their teens have no law enforcement contact for a year, contending it could compromise investigations and endanger informants.

The department at first rejected DOI’s request to let individuals file a public records request to see if they’re on the list, but relented after the Legal Aid Society threatened legal action.

In a second review in October, Investigations Commissioner Jocelyn Strauber found the NYPD had “made substantial improvements” but had not fully adopted five recommendations.

DOI noted, for example, that while the NYPD had initiated review of “activation,” there was still no supervisory oversight of renewals and deactivations. Last week the NYPD told THE CITY it is working on fixing this. 

While DOI recommended cops provide a detailed narrative explaining the justification for putting someone in the database, DOI found police continued to use “boilerplate language” to describe the source’s “reasonable belief” that the subject was a gang member. 

Now, NYPD spokesperson Tannor said, “Department policy has been updated to require that an individual’s reasonable belief must be supported by substantive explanations that the individual is a member of a criminal group.” 

“We have previously acknowledged that our process for making juvenile notifications was deficient,” Tannor said. “We are working to fix that.”

DOI also noted that sealed arrests aren’t supposed to be used to justify placement in the database, but found NYPD was still listing the top charge of sealed arrests in complaints to justify “activation.” This policy “is being updated,” the department said.

In its October report, DOI made 13 new recommendations, and in January NYPD agreed to accept all “in principle.” The NYPD said they should be in place by July. 

In February, nearly three years after DOI’s first report, the NYPD issued the biggest change to its gang database, embracing new protocols that eliminated many of the criteria cops had been using to justify “activation.” 

The department says it no longer uses categories such as “frequent presence at a known criminal group location” or “association with known criminal group members.” Scars and tattoos “associated with a particular criminal group” are no longer enough, nor is “frequent wearing of the colors” and “frequent use of hand signs associated with particular criminal groups.”

And they note that the number of people in the database has dropped from 18,000 in 2019 to its current 7,700 — a 58% drop. The number of juveniles fell from 440 to 209.

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This article was originally published by Healthbeat, a nonprofit newsroom covering public health published by Civic News Company and KFF Health News. Public health, explained: Sign up to receive Healthbeat’s free New York City newsletter here.

As New York City moves to offer 2,000 free child care seats by September, it falls to the health department to clear background checks for new providers. Concerned by a history of backlogs, the City Council this week held an oversight hearing and heard two proposals seeking to improve the process.

“If our city’s goal is universal child care, then we must ensure that the administration of that care, including the background check process, is as streamlined as possible, and that new facilities and employees don’t get held up in red tape,” City Council Health Committee Chair Lynn Schulman said at the Wednesday meeting.

“We must also ensure the relevant city agencies have the necessary bandwidth to complete these background checks and screenings in a timely manner. Unfortunately, it appears that DOHMH has struggled to keep up since the implementation of these comprehensive background checks,” she said of the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene’s work to comply with federal requirements updated in 2019.

Expanding child care is among Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s priorities, and the city is in the process of issuing contracts to private child care providers who will get city funding to offer the initial 2,000 seats for 2-year-olds this fall.

Officials are rolling out the program in five school districts, covering areas in Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, and the Bronx. Extensive background checks of the providers applying for licenses are required by law. Once a facility is open, the health department conducts unannounced inspections to promote compliance with health and safety mandates. Inspection results are posted on the health department’s website.

The permitting and inspections of the child care facilities are perhaps among of the lesser-known duties of the health department.

New York City Council Majority Leader Shaun Abreu proposed a bill Wednesday to no longer require the health department to mandate a background check for a prospective child care provider, employee, or volunteer if they have already had one in the past five years and have been employed by a child care provider for more than 180 consecutive days.

A second bill, proposed by Council Member Tiffany Cabán, would require the health department to sooner notify parents and others of child care centers that close because of health hazards. The proposal would also require the health department to post a summary of child care service inspection reports no later than 24 hours after an inspection.

The first bill stems from general concerns that the health department has struggled to process background checks in a timely fashion, with some background checks taking up to a year to be processed.

Backlogged

In 2019, when new federal requirements were implemented statewide, a backlog of background checks stretched into the tens of thousands, according to a committee report submitted with the bill. Some applicants looked for jobs elsewhere as the process lagged, taking an average of 36 days.

The bill highlighted a day care center in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, as an example. The facility could have served up to 170 children but closed its doors in August 2023 because of the lack of approved staff. It was waiting for staff clearance that had been submitted nearly five months earlier. Families with children enrolled in the program were left without child care for two months, while the provider lost over $250,000. Advocates said that such delays were not uncommon.

The health department created an online portal in May 2023 to improve background check processing. The agency testified in October 2023 that it had cleared some 5,000 backlogged applications since the portal was launched and whittled the number of applications to 140.

“Background checks are a critical safety requirement in most jobs, especially when it comes to safeguarding young children,” Council Member Jennifer Gutierrez, chair of the subcommittee on early childhood education, said Wednesday in prepared remarks. “Yet the current process has felt burdensome rather than an important step in safety. State, federal, and city requirements are layered on top of one another in ways that are not always well coordinated.”

Emmy Liss, executive director of the Mayor’s Office of Child Care, said the city was planning to work first with existing child care providers as part of the expansion; they already have a license and staffing.

“We anticipate there will be some new hiring to support 2-K and 3-K as there always is in the lead-up to the first day of school, but we do not expect a huge rush,” Liss said. “We are continuing to monitor what the staffing patterns will look like with our partners at New York City public schools and with the health department to make sure that we are prepared.”

Liss added: “As we prepare for the fall of 2027, when we will be bringing many more 2-K seats online, we’ll be planning ahead with the Department of Health and New York City public schools to ensure that there is sufficient staff capacity for onboarding those providers.”

Corinne Schiff, deputy commissioner for environmental health at the health department, said the agency has hired 60 people in recent years who work solely on background clearances.

Other improvements include an online portal for providers, new access to a Department of Education fingerprint system, and a policy change allowing staff to move between child care centers within a 5-year renewal period without a full new background check, as long as they notify the health department.

The current median processing time is about 30 days, Schiff said, with several hundred applications exceeding the 45-day mark, the deadline as required under federal law.

“Do you have plans in terms of lowering those?” Schulman said. “Five hundred is a lot.”

Schiff said the department was “continuing to make upgrades to the to the portal.” She pushed back on “backlog” characterization, noting that some background checks require working with agencies out of state.

Trenton Daniel is a reporter covering public health in New York for Healthbeat. Contact Trenton at tdaniel@healthbeat.org or on the messaging app Signal at trentondaniel.88.

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