{"id":147059,"date":"2026-02-27T05:19:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-27T05:19:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/147059\/"},"modified":"2026-02-27T05:19:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T05:19:08","slug":"mamdani-must-heed-state-call-to-reduce-bloated-welfare-spending-put-up-guardrails-before-looking-to-hike-taxes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/147059\/","title":{"rendered":"Mamdani must heed state call to reduce bloated welfare spending \u2014 put up \u2018guardrails\u2019 \u2014before looking to hike taxes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ouch: The state budget director, Blake Washington, just made a mockery of Mayor Zohran Mamdani\u2019s claims to face a fiscal crisis by pointing out<\/a> that New York City\u2019s social-service outlays have exploded 50% since the pandemic.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The rest of the state has cut those costs by about a quarter, Washington notes; the city clearly needs to \u201crefine\u201d these outlays, even install some \u201cguardrails\u201d against bloat.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Count this as Gov. Kathy Hochul\u2019s answer to Mamdani\u2019s threat to raise property taxes<\/a> if she doesn\u2019t give him the income-tax hikes he wants to balance his bloated $127 billion budget plan.<\/p>\n

Washington\u2019s warning is polite enough: The outlay explosion came before this mayor took office, driven first by Mayor Bill de Blasio\u2019s increases to \u201csafety net\u201d welfare spending and then by the city\u2019s response under Mayor Eric Adams to the Biden-era migrant crisis.<\/p>\n

Most likely, some \u201cone shot\u201d spending during the pandemic became permanent while no one was looking, too.<\/p>\n

State data shows that since 2019, the city Department of Social Services budget ballooned by 40% to $14.2 billion, while the Department of Homeless Services budget more than doubled to the $4.4 billion in Mamdani\u2019s FY 2027 budget proposal \u2014 and expansion of the city\u2019s safety net saw public assistance (welfare) caseloads soar 89%.<\/p>\n

\t\t\tMore From\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPost Editorial Board<\/p>\n

How much of it is just waste, how much is \u201cnonprofit profiteering\u201d and how much is outright fraud? <\/p>\n

The city lacks the fiscal controls to even guess \u2014 which is probably what Washington means in calling for \u201cguardrails.\u201d<\/p>\n

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If Mamdani continues to play blackmail games with the gov, she might just order an investigation into where City Hall is sending all this taxpayer money.<\/p>\n

At the least, the mayor\u2019s new DSS commissioner, Erin Dalton, is going to have to through the agency\u2019s books with a fine-tooth comb.<\/p>\n

And with the migrant crisis plainly driving<\/a> much of the problem, Mamdani should surely rescind his orders that would prolong it <\/a>as far as the eye can see \u2014 and also pull back on those ads urging migrants to sign up <\/a>for more help.<\/p>\n

Adams was able to balance his budgets with regular use of PEGs (for Program to Eliminate the Gap), ordering every agency to find efficiencies \u2014 even as this social-welfare spending exploded; Mamdani has no excuse for not ordering more PEGs if he thinks he\u2019s in a crisis. <\/p>\n

Forget about how his tax hikes would slam ordinary New Yorkers<\/a>; it\u2019s the mayor\u2019s duty to undo excess spending his predecessors imposed to help pay for his own \u201cvision.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ouch: The state budget director, Blake Washington, just made a mockery of Mayor Zohran Mamdani\u2019s claims to face…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":147060,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[14927,304,396,426,9,24,63,299,23280,15004,134,136,135,2780,25636,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-147059","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-staten-island","8":"tag-city-budget","9":"tag-editorial","10":"tag-fraud","11":"tag-kathy-hochul","12":"tag-new-york","13":"tag-new-york-city","14":"tag-nyc","15":"tag-opinion","16":"tag-overtime","17":"tag-social-services","18":"tag-staten-island","19":"tag-staten-island-headlines","20":"tag-staten-island-news","21":"tag-taxes","22":"tag-welfare","23":"tag-zohran-mamdani"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147059","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=147059"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147059\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/147060"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}