{"id":160120,"date":"2026-03-11T09:16:39","date_gmt":"2026-03-11T09:16:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/160120\/"},"modified":"2026-03-11T09:16:39","modified_gmt":"2026-03-11T09:16:39","slug":"nyc-comptroller-mark-levine-issues-dire-warning-says-budget-gap-is-at-7-3-billion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/160120\/","title":{"rendered":"NYC Comptroller Mark Levine issues dire warning, says budget gap is at $7.3 billion"},"content":{"rendered":"

As the City Council kicks off budget hearings, Comptroller Mark Levine<\/a> is warning that the city is staring down a $7.3 billion budget gap over this fiscal year and the next \u2014 a more dire projection than the mayor\u2019s most recent estimate.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can tell you that in all that time I \u2014 and we \u2014 have never seen a fiscal challenge as big as the one we face now,\u201d Levine was set to say in prepared remarks before the Council, which were shared ahead of time with the Daily News.<\/p>\n

Mayor Mamdani sounded the alarm at the beginning of the year about a possible $12.6 billion budget gap<\/a>, but has walked that number down to $5.4 billion<\/a> after including extra revenue and cash from the governor.<\/p>\n

But Levine said the mayor\u2019s revenue projections are too optimistic given the confluence of headwinds the city may face in the upcoming year \u2014 including the war on Iran and corresponding rise in oil prices, other threats from the Trump administration, weak job numbers and the impact of AI.<\/p>\n

The comptroller\u2019s new estimates found that the gap in the current fiscal year, which ends June 30, could reach $796 million, and the gap in fiscal year 2026, without a property tax increase, could reach $6.5 billion.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think they\u2019re acknowledging that a lot is riding on continued strong performance on Wall Street,\u201d Levine told reporters, pointing out that Mamdani himself has used the word \u201caggressive\u201d when talking about his budget plan.<\/p>\n

\"Mayor<\/p>\n

Ed Reed\/Mayoral Photography Office<\/p>\n

Mayor Mamdani releases the Fiscal Year 2027 Preliminary Budget at City Hall on Feb. 17, 2026. (Ed Reed\/Mayoral Photography Office)<\/p>\n

The mayor announced last month that he\u2019s planning on balancing the budget by drawing down about $1 billion from the city\u2019s reserves \u2014 a move Council Speaker Julie Menin said has never been done before.<\/p>\n

Mamdani has also put forward a property tax hike in the city, in a push for Gov. Hochul to give the city more money, including by moving on his cornerstone priorities of raising taxes on the rich and on corporations.<\/p>\n

Menin has also said that a property tax hike is a nonstarter. Mamdani has proposed a nearly 10% rate hike.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe State should and can also do more to rectify years of imbalance and unfunded mandates,\u201d he wrote in a budget analysis. \u201cRaising the City\u2019s already deeply inequitable property tax and drawing down long-terms reserves to close budget gaps, are troublesome actions that would bring harm to the city\u2019s most vulnerable residents and the overall fiscal health of the City, respectively.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As the City Council kicks off budget hearings, Comptroller Mark Levine is warning that the city is staring…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":160121,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[288,3365,267,75,84,83,9,24,10,692,12,63,87],"class_list":["post-160120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-local-news","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-news","tag-new-york-politics","tag-news","tag-nyc","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160120","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=160120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160120\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/160121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=160120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=160120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=160120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}