Mayor Zohran Mamdani will head to Albany Wednesday for the annual ritual of formally asking state legislators for more money for the city, just weeks after a very public plea for more funds.
The so-called “Tin Cup Day” sojourn is his first as mayor, and he’s expected to face skeptical lawmakers who’ll grill him on New York City’s reported budget gaps and the mayor’s wish to raise taxes on the wealthiest people and corporations.
Last month, Mamdani held a press conference — flanked by his first deputy mayor Dean Fuleihan and budget director Sherif Soliman, who will both join him in the state’s capital — to lay out the city’s “serious fiscal crisis.” He’s also traveling to Albany with Jahmila Edwards, who leads intergovernmental affairs.
New York City is $12 billion in the hole over the next two fiscal years, which Mamdani blamed on former Mayor Eric Adams’s budgeting and chronic underfunding from the state.
City Comptroller Mark Levine sounded the alarm earlier in January, predicting the city will end this fiscal year in June with a $2 billion deficit and closer to $10 billion next fiscal year.
“This isn’t one of those gaps that magically goes away,” Andrew Rein, the president of the independent Citizens Budget Commission, told THE CITY. “He needs to take specific action or else we’re going to hit a crisis.”
Up in Albany, Mamdani will face a grilling from legislators from all over the state and meet with Gov. Kathy Hochul — who has already repeatedly said she won’t raise taxes.
These are the “skeptics who will ask when he’ll put his own fiscal house in order first,” said Rein.
Wish List and Cost Cutting
Mamdani’s historic mayoral campaign championed making the city more affordable, but two of his major planks are mostly out of his direct control: a rent freeze for stabilized tenants and fast and free buses and free universal child care.
Shortly after his inauguration, he and Hochul announced a plan for universal child care for children as young as 2 years old, starting with space for around 2,000 children this year. The state is paying for the first two years of the program, which costs $75 million in its first year.
Expanding the program to all children under 5 years old could eventually cost up to $6 billion a year, Mamdani estimates.
Removing the fare on most of the city’s buses has so far been a more difficult campaign promise to fulfill, without the same support from the governor.
It’s unclear if the city or the Metropolitan Transit Authority, operated by the state, would cover what is estimated to be $630 million in lost annual revenue by making fares free on more than 300 routes.
His wishlist could of course be stymied by the city’s finances. Mamdani ordered every city agency to find ways to cut costs without affecting essential services for New Yorkers, though he avoided the term dreaded by government insiders “PEG,” or program to eliminate the gap, a common way to save money.
And he’s also denied that there will be layoffs across the city’s more than 300,000-person workforce.
Ana Champeny, the CBC’s vice president for research, said he could save money through attrition, i.e. by not rehiring people who leave or retire.
“If they manage hiring and those vacancies better they can fill essential positions,” she said.
