Eric Wollman wins City & State’s 2026 state budget poll

More than 200 people entered City & State’s 2026 state budget poll, but only one came close to guessing the date that the budget finally passed.

Eric Wollman, a former staffer in the New York City comptroller’s office, predicted that the budget would be passed at 1 a.m. on May 26. In the end, the final budget bills passed on the night of May 27 – just one day later, and nearly two months after the April 1 deadline.

How did Wollman come so close? “Well, May 26 is my birthday, so that was an easy one to just pick a date, and I knew it would be fairly late,” Wollman told City & State.

It might not take decades of experience with municipal finance to predict that the state budget would be late yet again, but it doesn’t hurt either. Wollman spent 46 years working for the New York City comptroller’s office, beginning under Harrison Goldin in the 1970s and ending under Scott Stringer. He’s now a special assistant to the chair of the Organization of Staff Analysts, a union representing municipal employees.

Wollman said he followed this year’s budget negotiations closely, though not “microscopically,” and was particularly surprised by the changes to Tier 6 pension reforms that changed the mandatory retirement age for cops. “I’m very pro-union,” he said. “Anything is good for working people and unionists, I support.”

Wollman visited the City & State newsroom this week to collect his prize: a custom City & State New York blanket. He was delighted to receive recognition from City & State, which he’s been reading ever since it launched 20 years ago as the City Hall newspaper.

“I’m a loyal subscriber,” he said. “I was a subscriber at one time – I think, as a city employee, I was comped – but I think it’s a must-read paper, actually.”

“I always am cutting and pasting things that are written (on the site) and commiserating with my former fellow colleagues and political people, so it’s entertaining,” he added. “It’s my version of the sports section.”