{"id":365464,"date":"2026-10-06T04:00:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-06T04:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/365464\/"},"modified":"2026-10-06T04:00:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-06T04:00:09","slug":"mamdani-charges-ahead-with-another-careless-promise-unfunded-nyc-2-k","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/365464\/","title":{"rendered":"Mamdani charges ahead with another careless promise: Unfunded NYC 2-K"},"content":{"rendered":"

As Mayor Mamdani <\/a>touts progress in expanding \u201cfree\u201d childcare, the bills for his socialist ambitions keep growing.<\/p>\n

He hasn\u2019t come up with a plan to pay for it all \u2014 other than, of course, betting that Albany will let him hike taxes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Look at childcare: The city\u2019s\u00a0pre-K and 3-K programs run partly through private providers who say the city pays them less than the work costs.<\/p>\n

One Brooklyn preschool owner told Intelligencer this week that her last contract funded assistant teachers at $30,000, with no health insurance.<\/p>\n

According to the city comptroller\u2019s 2024 review, 90% of certified lead childcare teachers with master\u2019s degrees and at least a year of experience earned less than Department of Education peers.<\/p>\n

The city lost 1,300 family daycare providers after pre-K and 3-K rolled out, the Center for New York City Affairs wrote \u2014 and as the program expands to cover 2-year-olds, more providers are wondering how they\u2019ll make ends meet.<\/p>\n

For years, NYC\u2019s early-childhood programs<\/a> have been plagued by delayed payments to providers, supply-demand mismatches and management failures.<\/p>\n

Mamdani only started addressing these nuts-and-bolts issues in August, yet he wants to expand.<\/p>\n

All told, his universal childcare program would cost an eyewatering $9 billion annually.<\/p>\n

Repeating\u2009mistake<\/p>\n

He\u2019s repeating what Mayor Bill de Blasio <\/a>did with 3-K: announcing a big initiative without securing the necessary funding first.<\/p>\n

If state funding runs out, Mamdani doesn\u2019t have a plan to ensure that families will continue to receive the care they now rely on.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s betting that Gov. Hochul won\u2019t want to be the one to take childcare away.<\/p>\n

But the deeper problem goes to the heart of the larger socialist agenda: promising ever-richer government benefits \u2014 free buses, universal childcare, city-run grocery stores and, eventually, the dream of single-payer healthcare \u2014 while outrunning the economic base that pays for it all.<\/p>\n

Remember candidate Mamdani\u2019s pledge<\/a> for free buses? That stalled as soon as Mayor Mamdani entered Gracie Mansion.<\/p>\n

If he wants to revive it, he\u2019ll need to come up with just over $1.1 billion a year, according to the Independent Budget Office.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, the money collected from bus fares is guaranteed as security for the MTA\u2019s bondholders.<\/p>\n

So if he wants to make all buses fare-free, he\u2019ll need to secure the bondholders\u2019 consent \u2014 which he hasn\u2019t yet sought.<\/p>\n

For four years now, New York City\u2019s spending has outrun its revenues.<\/p>\n

Between fiscal years 2017 and 2026, city spending rose $16 billion above inflation, according to the Citizens Budget Commission.<\/p>\n

The mayor faces an estimated $6.4 billion budget gap for the upcoming fiscal 2028, with gaps growing to $8.5 billion by 2030.<\/p>\n

Mamdani only managed to close the gaps in the fiscal 2026 and 2027 budgets through some $6 billion in one-time, temporary measures.<\/p>\n

Those easy moves won\u2019t be available to him come January.<\/p>\n

Pragmatic move<\/p>\n

All signs point to Mamdani rattling the tin cup harder in Albany next year.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s betting that Hochul, freed from the pressures of a gubernatorial election, will give him billions in new tax hikes.<\/p>\n

The mayor has shown he can be pragmatic.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tGet opinions and commentary from our columnists\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe to our daily Post Opinion newsletter!\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\tThanks for signing up!\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

He negotiated a delay on the misguided and expensive state mandate to reduce the city\u2019s class sizes and pushed back against the City Council\u2019s unsustainable expansion of city-funded rental vouchers.<\/p>\n

To deliver on childcare, Mamdani must accept fiscal reality, cut the DOE\u2019s bloated budget and put the money toward programs that parents want, like childcare vouchers.<\/p>\n

Otherwise, New York\u2019s children and families will be left with nothing but grandiose promises.<\/p>\n

Liena Zagare is editor of the Manhattan Institute\u2019s Bigger Apple newsletter, and John Ketcham is the institute\u2019s director of Cities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As Mayor Mamdani touts progress in expanding \u201cfree\u201d childcare, the bills for his socialist ambitions keep growing. He…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":365465,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[9894,426,9,24,55,54,56,299,51259,209,5271,82],"class_list":["post-365464","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-bill-de-blasio","tag-kathy-hochul","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-ny","tag-opinion","tag-preschools","tag-public-schools","tag-schools","tag-zohran-mamdani"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365464","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=365464"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365464\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/365465"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=365464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=365464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=365464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}