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On Wednesday, Mayor Zohran Mamdani strode into City Hall's Blue Room flanked by his first deputy mayor, Dean Fuleihan, and his budget director, Sherif Soliman. He was there to sound the alarm.
Mayor Eric Adams, he said, in conjunction with former governor Andrew Cuomo, had left the city in a catastrophic fiscal situation. The City faced a budget gap this year of $2.2 billion, one that would balloon next year to $10.4 billion.
"There is a massive fiscal deficit in our City's budget to the tune of at least $12 billion," Mamdani announced. "We did not arrive at this place by accident. This crisis has a name and a chief architect. In the words of the Jackson 5, it's as easy as A-B-C. This is the Adams Budget Crisis." He also blamed Andrew Cuomo, who has not been in office since 2021, for shortchanging the City over the years.
Mamdani said that the budget gap was the largest the City had faced since the Great Recession, one that would lead him to pursue "efficiencies" in City government in order to cut down on the deficit.
While he found those efficiencies, what was truly necessary to bridge this gap, Mamdani said, would be far more support from the state of New York. Specifically, the state needs to pass laws to raise taxes on the wealthy.
"We will be clear and direct about our needs with Albany. Working people did not cause this crisis, and they cannot be made the victims of its solution," he said.
Since launching his campaign for mayor, Mamdani has been calling for state legislators and Governor Kathy Hochul to hike taxes on the rich as well as increase the City's corporate taxes. And the governor has repeatedly refused these entreaties.
Now, the mayor is ramping up the pressure, by invoking a "historic" budget crisis to twist the governor's arm.
But is the City's budget situation really the four-alarm fire Mamdani is making it out to be?
Not exactly.