Editorial | Building a responsible budget at City Hall

The big players in the NYC budget: Mayor Zohran Mamdani and City Council Speaker Julie Menin.

Photos via Mayoral Photography Unit and NYC Council Media Unit

The New York City budget dance is on, and this year’s wrangling between the mayor and City Council over the Big Apple’s economic future figures to be particularly heated.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the City Council, led by Speaker Julie Menin, are offering competing visions in balancing the city’s books, and closing a $5.9 billion budget gap, for the coming fiscal year starting on July 1. 

Mamdani’s budget is out of the classic tax-and-spend school, as he seeks to pay for increased spending by either getting state lawmakers to tax the rich (a prospect that looks increasingly unlikely) or getting the Council to approve a property tax increase on all city property owners (which Menin has declared a nonstarter). 

Menin’s plan is nearly equal to Mamdani’s in terms of total spending, about $125 billion, two billion less than the mayor’s budget — but it erases the deficit and funds proper city services through some $6 billion in identified savings. Her plan does not include tax increases on anyone.

After Menin announced her budget last week, Mamdani went on the attack, calling it unrealistic and alleging that it would lead to draconian service cuts. The speaker rebuffed those charges while effectively saying that the mayor’s plan to raise taxes and draw upon city reserves to close the budget hole would be inappropriate and irresponsible.

In the end, as past mayors and City Council speakers have done, they will negotiate a deal this June that will likely fall somewhere in between the two budget visions. Given that they both seek to spend about the same amount of money, it’s hard to believe that they won’t be able to find a way to preserve vital public services and improve New Yorkers’ lives on a responsible consensus budget.

Let’s put things in perspective: If New York City were counted as its own state, its current $118.5 billion budget for FY2025 would be larger than the budgets of 45 other states. Only California, Texas, Florida, and Illinois have bigger budgets. 

New York City’s population is roughly 8.5 million. By comparison, California has 39.4 million; Texas has 31 million; Florida has 23.5 million; and Illinois has 12.8 million. 

In short, New York City spends plenty of money already for the population it has and their needs. The time has come to live within our means as all of us face the consequences of deep economic challenges around the United States.

If you don’t believe us, then believe four different bond rating companies that have issued negative economic forecasts for the city. The next step is a bond downgrade that will make it harder for the city to borrow money and raise capital for the bare necessities, setting the stage for an even worse fiscal crisis than what we face today.

This is a time for governing, not ideology. This is a time for getting serious about the city’s spending problem and reining it in. This is a time for Mamdani and Menin to chart a responsible path forward for the city. 

We know the speaker won’t shirk from that responsibility. Will the mayor?