{"id":36487,"date":"2025-11-11T22:23:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-11T22:23:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/36487\/"},"modified":"2025-11-11T22:23:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-11T22:23:07","slug":"spendthrift-staff-at-the-helm-for-zohran-mamdanis-first-city-budget","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/36487\/","title":{"rendered":"Spendthrift staff at the helm for Zohran Mamdani’s first city budget"},"content":{"rendered":"

Zohran Mamdani won the mayoralty<\/a> on a series of slogans, often without details on how he would achieve them.<\/p>\n

Now that he\u2019s taking the reins of the city, however, slogans won\u2019t cut it. <\/p>\n

He has to talk turkey.<\/p>\n

By\u00a0Feb. 1, the City Charter requires Mamdani to submit a preliminary budget \u2014 giving New Yorkers their first real sense of what their new mayor will prioritize.<\/p>\n

Expect it to approach or exceed $120 billion as he spells out how he\u2019ll fund existing programs, plus his freebie agenda.<\/p>\n

He and the City Council must adopt a balanced budget by June 30.<\/p>\n

Unlike Mayor Eric Adams, a relative budget hawk, Mamdani likely won\u2019t face pushback from the far left Council during budget negotiations.<\/p>\n

And with former de Blasio-era officials and nonprofit executives \u2014 plus Democratic Socialist operatives \u2014 staffing Mamdani\u2019s\u00a0transition team<\/a>\u00a0and key posts, it\u2019s clear his administration has little interest in fiscal restraint.<\/p>\n

Dean Fuleihan, an old hand in City Hall and Albany, will\u00a0return\u00a0to his former job<\/a> as first deputy mayor.<\/p>\n

He held that role under Mayor Bill de Blasio, too, after serving as budget director \u2014 where he oversaw years of city\u00a0spending\u00a0increases <\/a>that grew at up to four times the rate of inflation.<\/p>\n

Maria Torres-Springer, a veteran of the Bloomberg, de Blasio and Adams administrations, has the technocratic know-how to guide the fledgling mayor through the government\u2019s sprawling bureaucracy.<\/p>\n

But while Mamdani may be setting up for de Blasio 2.0, he faces one key difference: The city is in a much more fragile economic position today.<\/p>\n

De Blasio took office after Mayor Mike Bloomberg spent 12 years modernizing the city bureaucracy, growing the local economy and rezoning swaths of land along the East River to accommodate an influx of higher-paid workers.<\/p>\n

That strong fiscal foundation gave de Blasio a smooth first term, freeing him to focus on his signature universal pre-K program.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Mamdani is wading into choppier economic waters.<\/p>\n

For one thing, President Donald Trump has\u00a0pledged\u00a0to provide only<\/a> \u201cthe very minimum as required\u201d in federal funding.<\/p>\n

About $7.4 billion, or 6.4%, of the\u00a0city budget\u00a0comes from Washington.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s the local labor market, which has slowed in recent months: The city\u2019s unemployment rate is\u00a04.9%, higher than the nation\u2019s\u00a04.3%<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The biggest employment gains are in home health assistance and\u00a0personal care\u00a0jobs \u2014nominally private-sector positions that ultimately depend on unsustainable state Medicaid spending<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the city\u2019s tax base depends heavily on big earners.<\/p>\n

In 2021, the top 1% of\u00a0personal income tax\u00a0filers paid 48% of the city\u2019s collections \u2014 a sharp increase from their 40% share in 2019.<\/p>\n

The top 10% accounted for over 70% of the city\u2019s intake, while the bottom 50% paid in less than 5%.<\/p>\n

Contra Mamdani\u2019s campaign rhetoric, New York already taxes the rich.<\/p>\n

The most effective way to grow the city\u2019s budget, therefore, is to bring in top-paying firms in finance, tech and professional services.<\/p>\n

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That\u2019s how New York\u00a0blossomed\u00a0under Mayors Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg.<\/p>\n

Mamdani\u2019s zero-sum economic thinking threatens his ability to achieve his agenda.<\/p>\n

Instead of attracting entrepreneurs, big firms and talented workers, he wants to raise taxes on high earners and corporations, making the city less appealing<\/a> to employers and newcomers.<\/p>\n

For all the hoopla around the opening of J.P. Morgan\u2019s dazzling new 10,000-person headquarters<\/a>, the finance giant employs\u00a0more workers<\/a>\u00a0in Texas than in New York.<\/p>\n

As the Manhattan Institute\u2019s Nicole Gelinas\u00a0points out, Mamdani\u2019s transition team lacks any member who\u2019s notably pro-business or pro-police, and the addition of Lina Khan \u2014 President Joe Biden\u2019s Federal Trade Commission chair and an enemy of big tech \u2014 won\u2019t inspire confidence among business leaders.<\/p>\n

The bottom line: Raising taxes on the wealthy without improving the city\u2019s public services, ease of doing business, and public safety will make New York suffer in comparison<\/a> to other cities.<\/p>\n

Saving $2.90 on a bus ride isn\u2019t exactly the height of urban policy innovation.<\/p>\n

Though Mamdani is borrowing heavily from de Blasio\u2019s former team, he\u2019d do well to avoid his predecessor\u2019s approach to the public workforce.<\/p>\n

During his eight years in office, de Blasio\u00a0expanded\u00a0city employment by roughly 35,000 positions \u2014 well over a tenth \u2014 without any meaningful productivity improvements.<\/p>\n

In his first budget, Mayor Mamdani will discover that showering benefits on his friends in the public-sector unions and the nonprofit sector will leave less money to fulfill his campaign promises.<\/p>\n

And for all the talk of Mamdani as the new face of the Democratic Party<\/a>, Gotham on his watch might just revert to business as usual.<\/p>\n

John Ketcham is director of cities and a legal policy fellow at the Manhattan Institute.\u00a0All views expressed are those of the author and not the Manhattan Institute.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Zohran Mamdani won the mayoralty on a series of slogans, often without details on how he would achieve…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":36488,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[14927,301,20964,6709,9,24,11,10,299,2780,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-36487","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-city-budget","9":"tag-city-council","10":"tag-de-blasio-administration","11":"tag-mayor-bill-de-blasio","12":"tag-new-york","13":"tag-new-york-city","14":"tag-new-york-headlines","15":"tag-new-york-news","16":"tag-opinion","17":"tag-taxes","18":"tag-zohran-mamdani"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36487","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=36487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36487\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}