ALBANY – Gov. Kathy Hochul’s state budget proposal is already ballooning by another roughly $3 billion, as she piles more money into the Big Apple — even as Mayor Zohran Mamdani continues to insist on slapping New Yorkers with new taxes.
The new spending, which brings the state budget to an eye-watering $262.7 billion, includes $150 million to help financially struggling upstate cities after Hochul announced she would pick up the tab for $1.5 billion of New York City’s expenses earlier this week.
Republicans were quick to slam Democrat Hochul for failing to rein in the state’s runaway spending.
The new budget also includes $1.5B to bailout NYC. ZUMAPRESS.com
“The ink is barely dry on her proposed budget, the largest spending plan in state history, and the governor already wants to go higher,” state Sen. Tom O’Mara (R-Chemung), the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, told The Post.
“The governor is eager to deliver over a billion dollars to prop up a socialist agenda in New York City while tossing around peanuts to the rest of the state, especially struggling and overburdened upstate communities,” O’Mara said.
State Assembly Minority Leader Ed Ra (R-Nassau) said: “The governor’s 30-day amendments send a clear message: there is no effort to rein in spending—only to expand it.”
“More state spending has not translated into a better quality of life for New Yorkers. It hasn’t delivered safer streets, it hasn’t lowered utility bills, and it hasn’t made everyday life more affordable. We cannot spend our way to prosperity,” he said.
But newly-minted Buffalo state Sen. Jeremy Zellner (D-Erie) praised Hochul for tossing $40 million to New York’s second-largest city, which is facing a massive $60 million budget gap of its own.
“I commend Governor Hochul for recognizing the urgency of Buffalo’s fiscal situation and stepping up with this critical $40 million investment,” Zellner wrote in a statement.
Hochul already committed to spending $2 billion on child care subsidies for New York City – giving Mamdani a big win on one of his signature policy initiatives – before throwing the Big Apple the additional $1.5 billion to help cover its fiscal gap.
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But the Democratic socialist mayor — who has repeatedly called on Albany to raise taxes on New Yorkers making more than $1 million a year — ratcheted up the pressure even further this week.
Mamdani claimed he’d be “forced” to raise city property taxes by $9.5% to close the city’s $5.4 billion budget gap — unless Hochul and state lawmakers agreed to his “tax the rich” plan.
Hochul, along with City Council Speaker Julie Menin, has so far brushed off Mamdani’s property tax tantrum.
“I don’t support a property tax increase on New Yorkers and I’m not wavering from my position that I don’t want to drive more people out of our state by increasing taxes from what is already a high-tax state,” Hochul told reporters at an unrelated event in Westchester County yesterday.
An additional $1 billion in new spending will be coming from the feds, after the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid services approved an extension of a gimmick to extract more federal Medicaid dollars ostensibly disguised as a tax on healthcare middlemen. The additional funding was slated to go into the state’s Healthcare Stability fund, which is used to funnel cash to hospitals and other medical providers.
The amended budget also scales back Hochul’s extension of pilot programs for autonomous vehicles outside New York City.