Don’t expect NYC’s growing budget hole to deter – Latest News
On his approach out of the door, metropolis Comptroller Brad Lander warns of a $10 billion budget hole subsequent yr, growing to $13 billion the following — challenges that may certainly dent Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s freebie-filled socialist agenda.
Lander, of course, blames Mayor Eric Adams, when in truth the looming fiscal hole would’ve been worse if Adams hadn’t pushed back on the wild spending “adds” favored by the City Council and Lander.
And of course, a lot of City Hall’s further spending these final three years was the outcome of housing more than 115,000 “asylum seekers” who flooded into the Big Apple — a migration that Lander, Mamdani and different lefties welcome, at the same time as they intention to resist all ICE efforts to apprehend even essentially the most violent felony “refugees.”
Nor does Lander suggest spending cuts even now, regardless of doubtless coming cuts in federal support.
Instead, he urges pure sleight-of-hand — a pack of gimmicks that don’t actually scale back the underside line — and raising taxes on firms and higher-income New Yorkers.
Uh-oh: We thought these hikes had been how Mamdani would fund his new spending, not how he’d cowl present payments.
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Maybe Mamdani shall be fortunate enough that Lander’s substitute doesn’t routinely settle as many outrageously high legal claims; that would save a billion or so.
By the way in which, Lander doubtless understates the issue: State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli’s October report on metropolis funds projected an even more dire $17.1 billion budget hole for Mamdani’s first three fiscal years.
DiNapoli advises City Hall to confront the looming mess with “realistic revenue and spending projections” and by building up increased “contingencies or reserves”: Does he assume the voters simply elected a Republican?
We don’t remotely expect the new mayor to rework into that sort of fiscal hawk, so we’re nervously questioning what schemes he’ll come up with to pull tens of billions out of skinny air.
