{"id":23646,"date":"2026-04-12T23:51:37","date_gmt":"2026-04-12T23:51:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/23646\/"},"modified":"2026-04-12T23:51:37","modified_gmt":"2026-04-12T23:51:37","slug":"mamdanis-first-100-days-milestone-ends-where-governing-begins-the-budget-and-fixing-a-5-9-billion-hole","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/23646\/","title":{"rendered":"Mamdani\u2019s first 100 days milestone ends where governing begins: The budget, and fixing a $5.9 billion hole"},"content":{"rendered":"

For Mayor Zohran Mamdani,<\/a> the first 100 days have been full of efforts to show that government can still deliver for ordinary New Yorkers. He has used social media<\/a>, public appearances, and small but visible policy moves to argue that City Hall can be energetic, responsive and on the side of working people.<\/p>\n

But as the last reform-minded mayor to win over a million votes, John Lindsay, learned, there can be a great cost to good intentions. Now comes Mamdani\u2019s first test that cannot be won with messaging alone: the budget.<\/p>\n

As Margaret Groarke, a professor of political science at Manhattan University, put it, Mamdani has \u201ccontinued to campaign\u201d as mayor, trying to show New Yorkers that government can solve real problems that, in many instances, he has not yet begun to solve.<\/p>\n

The budget fight will determine whether he can show how the city can pay for them without his tax-the-rich\/tax-the-property-owner schemes.\n<\/p>\n

That is what makes the emerging budget clash the defining story of Mamdani\u2019s opening months in office, if not the defining story of his first term. The question is no longer whether the city has a problem. There is broad consensus that it does, and bond ratings agencies agree \u2014 with four of them lowering the city\u2019s financial forecast as a precursor to potentially downgrading the city\u2019s bonds.<\/p>\n

The fight now is over whether it can be solved by cutting spending, raising revenue, getting help from Albany, or a combination of all three.\n<\/p>\n

More money, more problems for Mamdani and NYC
\n\"MayorMayor Zohran Mamdani and City Council Speaker Julie Menin at the launch of the District 2 Pre-K and 3-K Center on the Upper East Side, Feb. 19, 2026.Photo by Lloyd Mitchell<\/p>\n

The mayor\u2019s critics and defenders start from the same premise: the city\u2019s books look more honest now than they did before he took office.<\/p>\n

In a recent analysis<\/a>, the Citizens Budget Commission praised the administration for presenting \u201ca much more credible accounting\u201d of the city\u2019s fiscal position while arguing that the improved transparency exposed a deeper structural imbalance between revenues and expenses. CBC said underbudgeting had masked the problem, not created it.<\/p>\n

The group put the combined gap across fiscal years 2026 and 2027 at $9.4 billion and said fiscal year 2026 spending was $16 billion higher than it would have been had it grown at the rate of inflation since fiscal year 2017.<\/p>\n

Mamdani has tried to frame the numbers differently, though not necessarily more optimistically. At an April 9 press conference<\/a>, he said the city first disclosed a $12 billion crisis, then reduced it to $7 billion through updated revenue estimates and savings measures, and then to $5.4 billion after Gov. Kathy Hochul committed $1.6 billion in state help<\/a>. What matters now, he said, is finding what he called a \u201cstructural solution for a structural crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n

He has insisted that the property tax increase in his preliminary budget is a \u201cpath of last resort\u201d and that his administration\u2019s $1.7 billion in planned savings are \u201csavings and efficiencies, not cuts to services.\u201d<\/p>\n

The mayor\u2019s idea of a structural solution differs significantly from other available alternatives.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

For Andrew Rein, president of the Citizens Budget Commission, the city\u2019s problem is straightforward: spending has grown beyond what the city can sustainably support, and the answer is not to search for more revenue but to get more serious about restructuring government.<\/p>\n

Rein said the City Council\u2019s response to Mamdani\u2019s preliminary budget was \u201crefreshing\u201d because it at least tried to close the gap without raising taxes or dipping into reserves. He also rejected the mayor\u2019s argument that the hole cannot be closed through spending restraint without \u201cdecimating\u201d services. \u201cIf we\u2019re smart and do the hard work,\u201d Rein said, \u201cyou can close this budget gap by reducing spending while preserving critical services.\u201d<\/p>\n

The mayor has seasoned budget experts in his inner circle, including First Deputy Mayor Dean Fuleihan, who are committed to a tax-and-spend agenda.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

Others say NYC strong enough to spend more
\n\"GovGov Hochul and Mayor Mamdani arrive to speak at Women In Need (WIN) in Manhattan on Thursday to highlight their proposal for universal child care for children under five.Photo by Lloyd Mitchell<\/p>\n

Emily Eisner, acting executive director and chief economist at the Fiscal Policy Institute, sees the same numbers differently. She agrees the spending problem is real.<\/p>\n

Speaking to amNewYork, Eisner said city spending had come in \u201cabout 10% higher\u201d than budgeted for several years, leaving the new administration with obligations that were larger than the budget had acknowledged.<\/p>\n

But she does not see that as a cuts-first story. She said FPI believes \u201cthe tax base is in the city and the state is strong enough to sustain the higher spending,\u201d even if current city estimates show a shortfall relative to projected costs.<\/p>\n

Eisner is also more skeptical than Rein of the City Council\u2019s alternative. She said some of the Council\u2019s assumptions may prove right, but that the package as a whole looked like \u201cthe most optimistic case,\u201d assembled from vacancy savings and the hope that spending would come in below current projections across several categories at once. In a separate answer, she called it \u201ca bit of a wish list.\u201d<\/p>\n

That difference \u2014 whether the city\u2019s main problem is excessive spending or insufficient revenue authority \u2014 sits at the center of the fight. Rein says, \u201cthis is not a revenue problem.\u201d Eisner says the obligations are real and the tax base is there to support them.<\/p>\n

Both agree that the baseline budget is more expensive than advertised before Mamdani took office. They disagree on what that recognition should force City Hall to do next.\n<\/p>\n

Will higher taxes drive more New Yorkers away?
\n\"manJamie Dimon, chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase & Co., was a notable no-show to the Partnership for New York City\u2019s July 15 meeting between business executives and then-Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani.REUTERS\/Mike Segar\/File Photo<\/p>\n

The disagreement is sharpest on one of the most politically charged questions in the debate: whether taxing top earners more would actually drive them away.<\/p>\n

Eisner argues that the tax-flight case is overstated. She points to FPI\u2019s research which shows that raising taxes on high earners in New York did not trigger an exodus in the past, and she pushed back on claims that New York\u2019s slower millionaire growth relative to places such as Texas proves higher taxes are hollowing out the tax base.<\/p>\n

That, however, could change soon. In his April letter to shareholders<\/a>, JPMorganChase CEO Jamie Dimon warned that any increases in taxes in New York City could be the final straw for many employers and their employees alike.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe truth is that while New York City has much going for it, particularly for financial companies (because of extraordinary local talent), it also has the highest city and state corporate taxes and the highest individual income and state taxes,\u201d Dimon wrote. \u201cPeople often make this a moral or loyalty issue, but it is not. Companies need to remain competitive in this very tough, fast-moving world. And higher taxes mean lower returns on capital and less competitiveness by their nature.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said New York has still seen growth in millionaire earners and argued that housing costs, transit and the overall cost of living do more to explain why some people choose to live elsewhere. She also said that when high earners leave, they often go to other high-tax states, not simply to low-tax jurisdictions.<\/p>\n

Rein is looking at a different warning sign. He is less focused on whether wealthy New Yorkers suddenly flee after a tax increase than on whether the city is losing ground in the competition for affluent residents and business activity over time. He said New York is in \u201cfierce competition\u201d for residents and businesses of all kinds and argued that the city has a shrinking share of the nation\u2019s millionaires.<\/p>\n

Ken Girardin, a fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute, pushes that critique even further and explicitly rejects the way FPI frames the question. He said the real issue is not whether the \u201cfrog jumps out of the pond,\u201d but whether the \u201ctadpoles\u201d are ending up in other ponds.<\/p>\n

In other words, he is less interested in dramatic stories of wealthy taxpayers bolting for Florida than in the slower question of where firms are expanding, where finance-sector wealth is growing and whether New York is steadily losing share of future growth. He also warned that the more the city relies on volatile personal income and corporate tax receipts, the more vulnerable it becomes to sudden shocks.<\/p>\n

That leaves the tax debate resting on two different standards of proof. Eisner and FPI argue that if tax hikes raise revenue and do not produce a visible surge in millionaire out-migration, the tax-flight case is weak. Rein and Girardin argue that the bigger danger is slower and harder to measure: not a one-year exodus, but a long erosion in where wealth, firms and future growth choose to locate.<\/p>\n

Groarke, the Manhattan University political science professor, offers a third lens, less about the tax data than about what the fight says about Mamdani as a governing mayor.\n<\/p>\n

She said the budget clash shows both the promise and the limit of his first 100 days. He has tried to use small wins and public announcements to show that government can work, she said, but the larger version of that politics now depends on money the city does not yet have.<\/p>\n

And while calls to \u201cfind efficiencies\u201d are always politically popular, she warned that many agencies have already been asked to do more with less for years. Groarke said it is \u201cnot always clear that there are magic savings to be found of any significant amount.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mamdani vs. Menin on taxes<\/p>\n

In most years, budget season in New York follows a familiar script: City Hall threatens cuts to visible services, the Council protests, and the two sides haggle their way to a compromise. Groarke said this year is different. The issue now is not just whether the city has enough money to protect the basics, but whether its revenue structure is enough to cover what New Yorkers have decided they want government to do.<\/p>\n

That dispute has now broken into the open between Mamdani and Council Speaker Julie Menin. At the National Action Network convention on April 8, Menin called the mayor\u2019s proposed 9.5% property tax increase a \u201chard no,\u201d arguing that it would hurt Black communities and small businesses.<\/p>\n

She said the Council\u2019s plan focused instead on efficiencies and reforms, including savings from no longer budgeting for positions that have remained unfilled. Mamdani responded the next day that he shared the opposition to a property tax increase and again called it a \u201cpath of last resort.\u201d<\/p>\n

But he also argued that anyone who wants to avoid putting the burden on working-class and middle-class New Yorkers should join him in pressing Albany to raise taxes on wealthy residents and profitable corporations instead.<\/p>\n

Mamdani has also drawn a hard line on what he will not do. \u201cThe things that will never be in question for me are the cutting of essential services to New Yorkers,\u201d he said on April 9.\n<\/p>\n

His argument is that if the city budgets for multibillion-dollar savings that are not backed by evidence, especially in vacancy reductions, it will eventually be forced to cut services to make the numbers work. That is his central objection to the Council plan.<\/p>\n

The least attractive part of the debate may be that none of the fallback options are especially appealing. CBC found that the mayor\u2019s gap-closing plan relied heavily on a proposed property tax increase, reserve drawdowns and other nonrecurring resources.<\/p>\n

By the group\u2019s accounting, $3.7 billion of the solution came from the property tax increase, $1.4 billion from lowering fiscal 2027 budgetary reserves, and $1.2 billion from the rainy day fund and the Retiree Health Benefits Trust.<\/p>\n

CBC argued those moves would make New York less affordable while weakening its fiscal resilience in a downturn. It also said the fiscal 2027 budget would include only $100 million in in-year reserves and that the rainy day fund would fall to about $1 billion, far below the roughly $15 billion CBC says a typical two-year recession would require.<\/p>\n

Rein agrees on that point. He said the city should protect the rainy day fund for a recession or a defined severe emergency, not use it to solve what he sees as a \u201cself imposed fiscal problem.\u201d He said a typical recession, before the pandemic, cost the city budget about $15 billion over two years.<\/p>\n

Girardin goes even further. He said City Hall is playing \u201cfast and loose\u201d with the rainy day fund and argued that the administration has not yet used the most serious tools available to force hard choices.<\/p>\n

His chief criticism is procedural as much as ideological: Mamdani created chief savings officers, but has not directed agencies to go through a more traditional PEG process to eliminate the gap. Girardin said that makes the math harder and increases the risk that the final budget will be held together by \u201cgimmickry or dubious assumptions.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Girardin, the danger in Mamdani\u2019s tax rhetoric is not only that it might weaken the city\u2019s tax base. It is that it reduces pressure to optimize how government spends the money it already has. He said the mayor faces \u201cdifficulty reconciling his sincere, earnest commitment to improving public service delivery, with his reluctance to challenge the status quo in how those services are delivered.\u201d<\/p>\n

The bigger conversation facing NYC<\/p>\n

His broader point is that a revenue-first politics can crowd out a harder conversation about how agencies actually operate.\n<\/p>\n

Eisner parts ways sharply with that view on one important point: the property tax hike. She said a \u201csmall increase in the property tax rate\u201d is preferable to cutting essential services, particularly with the threat of federal cuts to health care and nutrition assistance hanging over the next year or two. Her preferred answer is broader revenue authority from Albany and property tax reform. But if the state says no, she sees a modest property tax increase as the lesser evil.<\/p>\n

Groarke, meanwhile, notes that the property tax is one of the few major revenue levers the city can control on its own, even if it is unevenly distributed. That is part of what makes the budget fight such a revealing test of Mamdani\u2019s governing style. To get movement, she argues, an insurgent mayor may have to keep campaigning in office, rallying supporters, pressuring lawmakers and framing the dispute as a question of fairness rather than just arithmetic.<\/p>\n

She also argued that social media is \u201csuper important\u201d to that effort because it helps an executive communicate results, listen to voters and build pressure on other power centers.\n<\/p>\n

That tension between movement politics and institutional power may be the clearest lesson of Mamdani\u2019s first 100 days. His allies see a mayor using public pressure and moral framing to do the only thing available when Albany controls many of the real fiscal levers. His critics see a mayor still more comfortable talking about fairness than about agency restructuring, labor costs and long-term growth.<\/p>\n

Girardin, for one, said it was notable how little the mayor talks about economic growth as a way to ease budget pressure. Rein put the question in less ideological terms: Will Mamdani be as ambitious about improving the quality and efficiency of city services as he has been about making New York more affordable?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For Mayor Zohran Mamdani, the first 100 days have been full of efforts to show that government can…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23647,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[148],"tags":[16603,16604,2872,16605,16606,2873,16607,16608,10804,16609,10807,16610,10808,5151,553],"class_list":{"0":"post-23646","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-zohran-mamdani","8":"tag-albany-state-funding","9":"tag-citizens-budget-commission","10":"tag-city-council","11":"tag-fiscal-policy-institute","12":"tag-government-efficiency","13":"tag-julie-menin","14":"tag-manhattan-institute","15":"tag-municipal-budget-2025","16":"tag-new-york-city-budget","17":"tag-nyc-fiscal-crisis","18":"tag-nyc-politics","19":"tag-nyc-spending-cuts","20":"tag-property-tax-increase","21":"tag-tax-policy","22":"tag-zohran-mamdani"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/116394425402381609","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23646"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23646\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}