{"id":132850,"date":"2026-02-13T20:10:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T20:10:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/132850\/"},"modified":"2026-02-13T20:10:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T20:10:08","slug":"nyc-budget-watchdog-urges-mayor-zohran-mamdani-to-get-spending-down-stop-calling-for-more-taxes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/132850\/","title":{"rendered":"NYC budget watchdog urges Mayor Zohran Mamdani to get spending down, stop calling for more taxes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mayor Zohran Mamdani should end his calls for more taxes in the already heavily taxed Big Apple <\/a>\u2014 and instead get the city\u2019s longtime overspending under control, a fiscal watchdog warned.<\/p>\n

The centrist Citizens Budget Commission called on the Democratic socialist new mayor to act \u2014 including by streamlining bureaucracy and eliminating staffing bloat \u2014 in order to put the city on a path to \u201cfiscal sustainability.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNew York City\u2019s fiscal challenges are largely the result of excessive spending growth rather than insufficient revenues,\u201d the group wrote in a letter to Mamdani on Friday. <\/p>\n

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani called for more taxes during his Tin Cup Day in Albany. <\/p>\n

\u201cAgencies should be given appropriate ambitious targets, but savings should be prioritized to preserve critical services and not uniform across the board.\u201d<\/p>\n

The CBC also suggested that Mamdani tap into tech to offset personnel costs and reimagine programs or agency initiatives that haven\u2019t proven effective to come up with a multi-year plan to get city finances back on track.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe recognize that these choices are not easy,\u201d the letter reads. <\/p>\n

\u201cClear communication about priorities and tradeoffs will be critical, and we are confident in your ability to help New Yorkers understand how operational reforms can support affordability, protect core services, and strengthen trust in government.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the pathway to fiscal responsibility should not be put on the shoulders of taxpayers, forcing them to pony up more to the government, regardless of their income levels, the group said.<\/p>\n

\u201cNew York already carries the highest overall tax burden in the nation, and while revenues remain strong, tax increases would weaken the City\u2019s competitiveness.\u201d<\/p>\n

Andrew Rein of the Citizens Budget Commission BCNYS<\/p>\n

Mamdani has long called \u2014 along with his comrades in the DSA \u2014 for more taxes in the Empire State,<\/a> with the young mayor making a push for a corporate tax increase as well as a 2% bump on personal income taxes for those making more than $1 million.<\/p>\n

The mayor has been facing blowback from his alarmist press conference <\/a>two weeks ago, when he declared the city was staring down a $12 billion shortfall over the next two years, but failed to account for billions of dollars of tax revenue. <\/p>\n

Mamdani has since claimed the budget deficit sits at $7 billion, but his fuzzy math has annoyed even some<\/a> in his own party, even his pal in Albany<\/a>, Gov. Kathy Hochul. <\/p>\n

Marissa Shorenstein, the current CBC chair, also signed on urging the fiscal responsibility. Getty Images<\/p>\n

The Mamdani administration will release its first draft of a balanced budget Tuesday, when the public will be able to see the real fiscal health of the city.<\/p>\n

During the mayoral campaign, he repeatedly said the city could eliminate unneeded spending agency-by-agency, but he\u2019s yet to identify any substantive cuts to come.<\/p>\n

Even when Hizzoner prematurely sounded the alarm last month<\/a> about the city\u2019s multi-billion-dollar looming budget gap, he could only point to one Adams-era boondoggle, a deeply flawed AI chatbot, which cost around $500,000.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mayor Zohran Mamdani should end his calls for more taxes in the already heavily taxed Big Apple \u2014…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":132851,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[7739,15314,57,9,56,63,65,64,58,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-132850","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-budget","9":"tag-citizens-budget-commission","10":"tag-metro","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-ny","13":"tag-nyc","14":"tag-nyc-headlines","15":"tag-nyc-news","16":"tag-us-news","17":"tag-zohran-mamdani"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132850"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132850\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/132851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}