Mamdani promises no budget games – but he has a budget narrative

Mayor Zohran Mamdani faces a big budget gap. At an address about the severity of that $12.6 billion projected deficit on Wednesday, he named two culprits: former Mayor Eric Adams and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Both are conveniently powerless at the moment.

Two people who do have power: Gov. Kathy Hochul and President Donald Trump, went almost unmentioned. 

The budget address – a precursor to Mamdani’s preliminary budget plan due Feb. 17 – showed how the new mayor will try to a walk a tricky political tight rope that his predecessors also faced when it comes to municipal budgeting. 

How do you reign in spending without being accused of austerity? 

How do you demonstrate the city’s needs to the state while being transparent about an evolving picture of tax revenues?  

How do you pressure the governor without alienating her?

How do you keep expensive campaign promises and deliver a balanced budget?

This was not a press conference about the specifics of Mamdani’s budget plan. This was a moment to deflect blame. The overarching theme: That a $12.6 billion gap between this fiscal year and next should be attributed to Mayor Eric Adams’ mismanagement. “This crisis has a name and a chief architect,” Mamdani said. “This is the Adams budget crisis.”

While Mamdani said he will push the state to raise taxes on the wealthy (something Hochul has signaled she is not interested in), he laid out a case for why the state has been starving the city of aid. He didn’t blame Hochul, but rather his campaign rival, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who hasn’t held elected office for half a decade.

Hochul, who’s navigating a big election year, didn’t say on Wednesday whether she was given a heads up about Mamdani’s address. At an unrelated press conference, she said that she expects the budget gap to narrow with an updated revenue forecast. Of Mamdani’s call for a tax hike on the wealthy, she said: “I don’t think that’s a news flash today.” She noted that she has invested more in the city than past governors, but didn’t close the door on increasing city funding. “I understand the needs are great in this city. I’ve already said that the budget process is nowhere near done yet, and we’ll look at our resources, look at the city’s resources,” she said. “We’re going to help them figure it out.”

Mamdani declined to mention President Donald Trump, whose threats of cuts to federal funding for sanctuary states and cities could have dire, if still vague, impacts on the city’s resources.

Unspecified “efficiencies”

What wasn’t made clear during the Blue Room speech was how Mamdani plans to fill the budget gap, or how much the gap might decrease with additional revenue from Wall Street bonuses.

Mamdani said that part of his approach will include finding “efficiencies” in current city spending. After being pressed several times by reporters about what cost-cutting measures were on the table, Mamdani offered only as an example an AI chatbot program implemented by Adams that he said cost nearly $500,000. Mamdani is also in the tight position of having been one (of the many) to criticize budget cuts under the first three years of the Adams administration. He is unlikely to pursue unpopular citywide savings initiatives – so-called “Programs to Eliminate the Gap” – as Adams did, but it’s unclear whether any of the kinds of cuts that were a part of those initiatives will feature in Mamdani’s plan.

He did not answer when asked if steps like cuts to other agency spending or eliminating vacant positions from the city payroll were on the table. “I think there is a difference between pursuing savings and efficiencies, and pursuing austerity,” Mamdani said Wednesday. “We are going to pursue every single saving and efficiency that we can find, and we’re also going to do so in a manner that does not come at the expense of working New Yorkers.” 

Zara Nasir, executive director of The People’s Plan NYC, a coalition of advocacy groups that organized against Adams’ budget cuts in recent years, said she’s encouraged to see Mamdani pushing the state to kick in more revenue. The group also sees an opportunity for city agencies to ramp up enforcement on fines and fees for landlords and other companies as a potential source of new revenue.

An analysis released by New York City Comptroller Mark Levine earlier this month showed that underbudgeting of known expenses – in particular city rental assistance vouchers – has driven budget gaps. 

“This gap is real, and in fact, it doesn't account for the possibility of a recession or the AI bubble popping,” Levine told City & State. “It doesn’t account for the expansion of CityFHEPS (rental vouchers) – which is caught up in court – actually being implemented. It doesn’t account for our need to renegotiate labor contracts.”

The fiscal watchdog Citizens Budget Commission has repeatedly pressed city officials to accurately reflect spending in their budget projections. The CBC has projected a smaller budget gap than the comptroller, expecting that with higher revenues and lower than expected spending, the gap can be closed this fiscal year, and next fiscal year it will approach $8 billion.

CBC President Andrew Rein said he’s been encouraged to hear Mamdani talk about transparency in budgeting, as well as talking about procurement reform at the Department of Education on the campaign trail. 

The former was part of Mamdani’s pitch on Wednesday, promising to blaze a new, transparent trail in city budgeting practices that he accused the last administration of being particularly deficient in. “Throughout all of this, we are looking to be honest and direct with New Yorkers,” Mamdani said. “We are not looking to play the kinds of financial games that have often come to characterize the budget process.”