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Comptroller Mark Levine on City Budget Negotiations & the Importance of Economic Growth
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New York City Comptroller Mark Levine, a Democrat…
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Foreign. Hello and welcome to Max Politics.
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This is Ben Max coming to you from New York Law School and its center for New York City and State Law. Thanks for tuning in. Talking here on Thursday, March 26, 2026. And New York City Comptroller Mark Levine is back on the show today for something of a part two to the conversation we had a little over a month ago on February 17th when we spoke late on the day Mayor Zoram amdani released his $127 billion preliminary budget for next fiscal year, which begins July 1 this year. And Comptroller Levine provided an in depth reaction to that plan as well as analysis of the city's economic and fiscal health, state and city budget pictures and more. It was an especially notable day given it was the new mayor's first budget plan since taking office January 1st and he made some serious waves in the design of that plan and and it was also the first city budget reaction as comptroller for Levine, who like Mamdani, just ascended to his citywide perch for the first time after winning last year's election. So now we're here five weeks later and there's been more analysis and discussion of the city's budget picture and how a new state budget due very soon will impact it and help close the $5.4 billion budget gap for next fiscal year that Mayor Mamdani the City Council he has to negotiate the budget with. Comptroller Levine and others are dealing with Mamdani's plans for closing that gap, including calls for tax increases along with some savings and spending re estimates dipping into city reserves and other methods. The new Democratic socialist mayor wants state level approval for income and corporate tax increases on high earning individuals and companies. But if he doesn't get those increases, which are opposed by Governor Kathy Hochul in her negotiations with the state Legislature where there is some support for tax increases, then Mamdani has threatened to pursue a property tax increase at the city level. That's the only tax the city really has control over, though the City Council, where he must get approval for that, has said it's a non starter and mom Donnie himself has said he doesn't
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really want to do it.
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He's also proposing some potential use of city budget reserves as well as other methods to close the budget gap that he inherited from Mayor Eric Adams and the prior City Council. It's a tactic that rating agencies like Moody's have been sounding alarms over because using city reserves when the city economy is doing well and there's no big shock to the system doesn't actually help fix the city's structural budget imbalance, where it's been spending more than it takes in.
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So there's been a lot of alarms
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being sounded over some of the proposals in Mamdani's budget. One thing he's had to do, which he's actually gotten a lot of credit for from people across the political spectrum, including Mark Levine. My guest today is to realistically present the city's actual planned spending, which had been under budgeted by billions of dollars for years. So in his first budget plan, Mamdani has sort of reset things, showing more than $10 billion in spending that was apparent or likely or predicted, but not allocated in the final budget update that Mayor Eric Adams had issued in November of 2025. But that more realistic picture also created new challenges for Mamdani in facing a large budget gap, which started at around a $10 billion estimate for next fiscal year, but was down to about $5.4 billion. After RE estimates of more tax revenue coming into the city and other measures that the mayor planned to take, including some additional promised help from the governor in the new state budget, as well as an agency savings plan that Mamdani instituted to find efficiencies and eliminate. He's just started to announce the results of that agency savings plan, but he still needed to close the $5.4 billion gap after all that, for the fiscal year that will begin in just over three months from now. And that's where he slotted in the property tax increase and the use of savings and a couple of other methods. So those plans have gotten a lot of pushback from many, including at the City Council, which just finished several weeks of hearings on Mamdani's preliminary budget, including the day before. I'm speaking here on March 25th with the new mayor's top budget officials, led by Budget Director Sharif Solomon, who testified along with his deputies in front of the council for over five hours. Council members repeatedly stressed the property tax increase is a no go. And again, Mamdani said he doesn't really want to do it, and Solomon called it a measure of last resort. Council members also asked the Mamdani budget team about a variety of specific agency funding and staffing and programmatic issues, including about the administration's approach to to hiring or eliminating the budgeting for over 10,000 budgeted but vacant positions across city agencies. So some of those personnel policies are really up for debate, as well as questions on the administration's savings plans in other ways, with some council members pushing
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for more spending in certain ways and
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some pushing for more savings, some pushing for both, but in different areas, like Council Speaker Julie Menon, who wants the city to show a lot more efficiencies and savings, but also some increased spending in certain areas, like housing vouchers for people at risk of homelessness who are or experiencing homelessness.
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So of course, the new mayor has
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only been in office not even three months yet, and a lot is still be determined for this budget, the broader administration policies and more. Along with a new state budget expected in the next few weeks, probably by mid April, there will be a formal City Council response to Mamdani's preliminary budget.
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Then the mayor will take both of
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those and more into consideration and present his executive budget plan on or by May 1st. And then the council will hold more hearings on that plan. Negotiations will really heat up and a city budget must be passed by the end of June. So today I'll get Comptroller Levine's latest thoughts on the city budget picture and the negotiations that are unfolding both in Albany at the state level and in City hall, and his thoughts on how the city should close that $5.4 billion gap for next fiscal year without raising property taxes and more. And we'll also get into something very much related that we didn't have time for in our February conversation, but said that we'd revisit soon, which is what we're doing now, the city's economic health and the importance of economic growth to the city and its budget and how the city should be approaching economic development, job growth and more. So a really interesting conversation ahead here momentarily with Comptroller Levine and and with state budget negotiations coming down the home stretch and its importance to the city. My most recent conversation here on the podcast was a very interesting one with State Senator Gustavo Rivera of the Bronx, who gave his in depth update on budget negotiations at the state level and his take on a variety of important policy and spending issues. So check that conversation out if you didn't listen to it yet.
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That and a whole bunch of other
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excellent conversations in the podcast feed here for after you listen to this one.
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All right, I'm very pleased to welcome back to Max Politics, New York City Comptroller Mark Levine, a Democrat who entered
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this citywide office at the start of
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the year after winning last year's election. This is something of a part two to the conversation we had a little
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over a month ago on February 17th when Mayor Mamdani released his $127 billion
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preliminary budget for next fiscal year, which begins July 1st and Comptroller Levine provided an in depth reaction to that plan. It was a sort of day of reaction and he's had a lot more
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time since then to dig in.
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But a lot of good analysis there of the initial plan from Mayor Mamdani
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and analysis of the city's fiscal health
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and thoughts on the plan ahead, which which he said should include a focus
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on structural balance in the city's finances,
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getting more aid from Albany and finding more efficiencies and savings through city agencies and city programming. Now faculty Five weeks later, there's been more analysis and discussion of the city's budget picture, including a month of City Council hearings that concluded yesterday, March 25, with five hours of testimony from Mamdani administration budget officials, including the budget director, Sharif Salman. And no one likes Mayor Mamdani's threat to increase property taxes to fill the city's $5.4 billion budget gap for next fiscal year, including Mayor Mamdani and his budget team. And there's a lot of debate and negotiation over his and others calls for increased personal and corporate income taxes that need approval.
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At the state level, there's debate over
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how much Albany should be helping the city, the health of the city economy, the possible and ongoing impact of federal policy, and much more.
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So, Comptroller Levine, thanks for joining me
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again to discuss all this and more.
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How are you, Ben? It's great to be back. Thanks so much. Excited for the conversation.
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Thanks for taking the time. When we last spoke, we said we'd do a part two soon. So here we are. State budget negotiations are coming down the home stretch. We don't think we'll have a state budget by the April 1 start of the new state fiscal year, but it should be sometime in the in the couple of weeks or so after April 1st. That deal will have a major impact on the city. And with that, and generally there's plenty to discuss on the city's budget picture. But something we said last time that we're going to get into really a good bit today that is very much related to the city budget picture is the city's economic health, the importance of economic growth to the city and its budget, and how cities should be approaching economic development. So we'll get into that in a minute. But let's start with the latest on city budget negotiations. Where do we stand from your view? Virtually no one thinks that billions and dollars of increased property tax revenue is going to be what actually fills most
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of the city budget gap.
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Mayor Mamdani never really wanted to do that and Said that right up front, but that's how he was plugging a good chunk of that gap in his preliminary budget plan. So where are we right now? When we last spoke, you said, don't do the property tax increase. We need more help from Albany. We need more efficiencies at the city level.
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And of course, you know, maybe it's
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worth discussing some tax increases at the state level, if really necessary. That's my summary of what you said. So where do you see things right now here on March 26th?
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Boy, it's been an eventful five weeks since we last spoke.
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Feels like a couple months at least.
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And I believe we spoke quite a lot about my concerns for the year ahead and economic risk. Well, then President Trump launched a war in the Middle east, which has only heightened those concerns. And I think that is actually a dark cloud hanging over all of these conversations. We have been counting on Wall street to continue to surge, and this just adds one more level of risk to that. But there's been other developments as well. We have had three of our four rating agencies. The credit rating agencies that evaluate the fiscal health of New York City have changed their outlook from stable to negative. This is an unusual development. As you know, Ben, this has happened during the financial crisis and during COVID But for a negative outlook in an otherwise strong economy, that's unusual. And rating agencies are reacting to the structural imbalance in the budget that you and I spoke about five weeks ago. I think that partly because of the impact of those rating agencies changing their outlook, there's been much more serious discussion about savings in New York City's budget, particularly in some of the fast growing areas that we've spoken about, like the housing voucher program known as city fabs. Growing costs. Because of the class size law, there seems to be some movement in finding ways to slow the growth in those areas, and that's going to be necessary for sure. Long way to go, though. If, if our goal, which it should be, is to avoid raising property taxes, and if our goal, as it should be, is to not raid our rainy day fund and other reserves, then we've really got to find at least another $5 billion. Some of that could come from Albany, but undoubtedly much of it's going to have to be achieved through savings and efficiencies in our budget. So with three months to go, we have a lot of work to do. I'm optimistic we can get there, but I think the heavy lifting is still ahead. Ben?
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Yeah, it's so interesting. If there's all this Opposition to raising property taxes. And part of what the ratings agencies were reacting to was not just a structural imbalance, but we were getting at there too was the strategy of potentially rating savings during good economic times to fill a budget gap, which is again, not something you can do in recurring fashion. So therefore it doesn't fix your structural imbalance. If you're sort of taking those two things perhaps off the table, you're almost back to square one in terms of addressing this $5.4 billion forecasted budget gap. So that's, that's kind of a problem. But there is, there is some time before July 1st and the news, the start of the new city fiscal year. What's your sense of where things stand at the state level? So it looks like there's a lot of optimism and openness, including maybe the key voice on this, Senator John Lew of Queens, who was the big champion of the class size law at the state level, although obviously it had widespread support, including then Assemblymember Mamdani. But to lower class sizes and require the city to do that.
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Very costly.
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Lots of, you know, potential positives to that, but very costly. So there seems to be significant openness to slowing that down in state law, giving the city more time and therefore reducing the fiscal burden. What's your sense of what else is happening in state budget negotiations?
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The two houses of the legislature put
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forward plans that had tax increases to allow the city to tax very high income earners and high earning corporations more to bring in revenue, other ways to get the city more money. Those proposals are now, you know, part of their negotiating tactics with the governor. Do you have a sense of where things stand in terms of how Albany may or may not provide the city with more fiscal help?
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Yeah, look on the class size, this is just one more in a long series of unfunded mandates that Albany has placed on the city. And look, I was a teacher. I was teacher, as you know, in the South Bronx in the 90s, I had 36 kids per classroom. Believe me, I understand how important having smaller class sizes is for teachers, ability to reach every child, but we need funding for that because we have to hire more teachers and in some cases we have to build more schools or renovate existing schools. And this is a five year phase. In the first years are pretty easy because we've lost so many students in the public schools that in many schools they already are at or below the class size goals or can easily achieve them. But now we're in year four and it's not easy anymore. And it's going to require meeting year four's goals would require hiring more teachers, a cost that the school's chancellor, Kamar Samuels, put at 600 million. He's asking for more flexibility on the timing and it does seem like there's some momentum on that. John Lew being one voice, obviously a lot of credibility was his law. He's been out there saying, yeah, maybe we need some flexibility on the timeline. But unfunded mandates are just one category of the help we need from Albany. There's a long series of funding formulas that disadvantage New York City where either we get lower reimbursement rates in other parts of the state or just less funding to the tune of billions of dollars. We send billions more to Albany than we get back. And so we are pushing. I went up to Albany on 10 Cup Day to ask for a more fair allocation and we're still pushing for that. And I hope that will help close our budget gap. There are a variety of revenue raisers in the one house bills and all that should get good consideration. Can't say I've heard a lot of momentum towards tax increases at this point, but maybe, maybe that will be an unexpected turn. I think more likely is we'll get help on some of the funding formulas, which I would certainly welcome.
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Yeah. The governor, you know, even asked about her top priorities in the final days of or weeks of budget negotiations, did say, I want to get more help to New York City and other cities around the state. She's still opposing some of those tax increase measures, but the state does have a pretty good amount of budget cushion of their own and, and a lot of, you know, pretty solid revenue picture there as the state budget continues to grow and they have, they have strong reserves. So we'll see what happens there. Again, as you're getting out, one of the questions will BE 1 Shots versus structural changes in absolute formulas and whether it's sort of like, are we just getting through this next budget or is there more of a stable playing field? The other part of that as you're getting at though, is reining in some
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of the spending in the city.
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Questions around that. Mayor Mamdani, obviously part of the reason he wanted to put a revenue raising, whether it's his less preferred method of property tax increases or more preferred method of income tax and corporate tax increases on higher earners, is, you know, that he put that in to, to close the budget gap was because he only wanted to do a relatively modest amount of efficiencies at agencies because he didn't want to come in and start cutting services and, you know, doing the very thing that he had criticized Eric Adams for doing and threatening for years. So what do you see though? There seems again to be questions about the housing voucher program you just mentioned. City FEPs. Litigation's ongoing. The city council wants, you know, the mayor to come to a settlement on that that expands the program, but, you know, seems open to some, you know, modifications of the law. Are there other areas that you're pushing for to see in a, in a city budget agreement or even in the mayor's executive budget plan, which is due May 1, that you want to see more reining in of spending more savings around? How are you thinking about, you know, how the city should be approaching as you've called for finding more efficiencies and more savings of the city, of the level?
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Sure. Look, the city FEBS is worth spending a second on because it's just such a large, fast growing part of the budget. It's a wonderful program. It's been very effective at helping families or individuals get out of shelters and into housing of their own because it, it's essentially like a Section 8 voucher. But it's growing at a remarkable pace as I think, you know, Ben, 4% a month increase. We don't see that kind of growth in government programs almost ever. It's going to break two and a half billion next year, which for comparison is more than the entire operating budget of HPD Housing Preservation Department. And it's just not sustainable. There's also an even greater expansion now that's tied up in court that would potentially double the pace of growth. So that's going to require a lot of work. And I am optimistic that both the mayor and the city council are talking about reconfiguring that program so it's more manageable. The schools. The budget has grown consistently every year at a time when the enrollment is dropping. We're down 100,000 students since 2020, 200,000 students since 2010. And so there's, there's, I'm sure there are ways we can save some money in the school system. One obvious place to look is schools that are under enrolled. And Ben, we have 200 schools that have less than 200 students and that has a lot of cost involved because you have still have to have a principal and an assistant principal and a school secretary, et cetera, even if you only have 125 kids. So by combining schools, you're able to save money. That would be one obvious place to look among probably others in the school system. And we talked about getting more flexibility on class size.
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There's also just quickly on that. Are you ready, you know, as a city comptroller, as a, you know, I don't want to label you in these intra Democratic party, you know, wars, but as a liberal to progressive, you know, Democrat, are you, are you ready to support the mayor and the city if they come out and say, you know, we can't keep doing this, you know, quote unquote, hold harmless policy where we're continuing to send the same amount of money to schools despite lower student enrollment? I mean, there's a lot of reasons to do that, you know, guidance counselors, art teachers, etc. But there's also, as you're getting at, major concerns about the sustainability of the spending. You know, again, this seems like an area where the city council probably isn't going to want to be behind that because local, you know, certain local schools and districts will be looking at reduced funding or the school mergers that you're talking about. Are people ready for that in this city to sort of support the mayor in making those decisions?
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Look, every one of these proposals is tough politically. Ben. Yeah, school mergers are very difficult. And obviously any, any cuts to a school budget are going to be really tough. But at a certain point, if enrollment drops 50% in the school, and that has happened in some schools, it's going to have to be reflected in the budget or else it's just unfair to the rest of the system because schools that are more crowded are in effect, getting less per student. And you want to cushion schools from drastic cuts year to year, for sure. But we're now five or six years into the post pandemic enrollment trial, and at some point that's going to have to be accounted for in school budgets. Otherwise it's just not sustainable and it would mean imposing difficult cuts elsewhere.
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Mayor Adams came in and looked at that, got the city council to agree to a budget that, that did some of that. And then the city council kind of freaked out about it because they were getting blowback and they regretted the budget that they had passed and they started to, you know, protest against their own budget. This is now going back several years.
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Well, this, this is four years later.
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Yes. And again, the fraught nature of it, where people often on its face, you know, it's sort of common sense in some ways to take a close look at budgets when the enrollment has dropped so much. But then, as you said, the politics become very difficult. Yeah, yeah, I had jumped in. You were going to get maybe to one or two other areas that you were looking at in terms of ways the city can.
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Yes.
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Just some spending or.
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Yeah. Yes. So we have a program to provide private school education for students that have learning challenges. And people know it as Carter cases. It's technically called due process cases, but parents know Carter cases. This is also growing at an astounding pace. In 2019, it was costing us about 500 million. And here again meant next year it's going to break one and a half billion. So tripling since 2019. Very unusual to see programs grow so fast. And it's not sustainable. The obvious. There are a number of things we should probably do to rein that in, but the most obvious is to have better programming in the public schools so that we don't have to have people depart the public school system. There are cases where kids can't even get a good evaluation, let alone get their actual IEP fulfilled. So again, fast forward.
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That's indicative of some of the other things people are talking about. And the mayor, even, you know, he. He released some of the examples of the savings that his chief savings officers have found at different agencies, which he assigned them to do to. To find roughly $2 billion in savings total. But. But that's sort of this outsourcing, insourcing discussion that's happening across government in a lot of ways, too. It's like, how much. Again, this is a different way of. Around it because it's. It's special education services. It's not like an outside contract for it, but it's. It's still in that similar bucket of. It can be a lot more expensive to have to pay to go elsewhere than to bring some of these services in house, but you have to be able to do them in house.
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Absolutely. I've thought a lot about this in terms of technology outsourcing and the real advantages to having that capacity in house. But there's no doubt that serving kids with learning challenges is one compelling case. Can I say that I've also been thinking about some ways to increase revenue in creative ways. One, I want to mention that Jonathan Bowles, who I'm sure you know well from center for an Urban Future, has pointed out is increasing parks concessions. So these are the proverbial hot dog stands in parks and cafes and things like that, where it's an amenity to parks users and I think actually good for the park system, also generates revenue. But you might not know this, Ben, that revenue doesn't go to the Parks Department. It goes into the general fund. And I'd love to see adding some new concessions, but allowing at least the additional revenue to go right to the Parks Department. This won't generate hundreds of millions of dollars, probably more like tens of millions. But we've also got to look for some creative revenue ideas.
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It all counts.
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Should there be a more of a
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rallying around the mayor's calls for these increased tax revenues at the state level? I mean, the state Senate and Assembly put in, you know, increase allowing the city to increase income taxes on people making $5 million or more annually, you know, hiring incorporations. Again, you know, some of these are policies that. That poll quite well with the public. You know, there's a lot of support among Democrats, especially for increasing taxes. Last time we spoke, you know, you said you favor a more progressive, progressive tax structure, but you'd prefer to see it at the national level. But it needs to be, you know, sort of in discussion. The governor, again, is against these increases, but, you know, we're getting at some of these ways to save money and look at, rein in expenses and all of that. But also there's ways in which lots of Democrats especially and New Yorkers want the city to be spending more money. Parks is one perfect example. You know, this idea that 1% of the city budget would go to parks, and everybody keeps promising that and then not delivering it. You know, other things like that. Should this be more of a rallying cry from yourself and Speaker Menon and other Democrats that actually, you know, some increases in taxes actually should help the city, you know, fix its fiscal balance?
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Man, I have spent my entire career in government calling for robust investments by our city government in, in public space, in programs to create opportunity in public health and so much more. The best way to achieve that is by having a thriving economy so that we produce the revenue that we need to make those investments. I've also talked about my concerns about inequality, growing inequality. We're approaching Gilded Age levels of inequality in America, and I think it's getting worse, driven by some of the technological changes. But as I said, we spoke last time, my preference is always to see that. My preference is that we have strong national tax codes that ask more from the wealthy so that we avoid states playing off each other in a pinch. Of course, that needs to be on the table locally as well as it is in New York, and it is in both House. It is in the single House bills in Albany right now. But I also am cautious about impacts on the economy because we have a budget right now that depends on Wall street continuing to Surge. We just got from the state comptroller a report on the annual Wall street bonuses, which were the all time record at almost 50 billion this season, a 9% increase from last year. And the mayor's budget proposal assumes that that will continue into next year. And I think that's optimistic. And our projection is a little more conservative. But it could happen and I hope it happens. And I want us to make sure we do everything we can to achieve that. And so we do have to think about the ways that our policies are impacting the business climate here. And it's why I'm a little bit cautious on the questions of tax increases.
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All right, let's talk about some more on that business climate and the and the economy again. We could probably spend all our time together here continuing to discuss city budget aspects. But you know, you've talked about the importance of economic growth partly as you got it there, thinking about ways to tackle inequality, more opportunity, more equitable growth, more job opportunities, especially at better wages for people, but also more broadly, as you're getting at there. And the last part of what you were saying, also just the importance of a growing economy and that brings in more tax revenue that then is at the disposal of government. You said last time we spoke there's key pillars you're thinking about, about what an economic growth strategy for the city should look like. So say a little bit about how you see sort of the issues in the city economy right now, which again is growing, but not necessarily growing at a robust pace. And there's all these federal actions and policies that seem to be having an impact, including some depression of tourism to the city internationally and some other issues. But how do you sort of see where we're at right now?
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And how should specifically a city government
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focused economic development and growth plan, you know, what should be the core pillars of that?
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You know, there's a very big contradiction at the heart of New York City's economy right now. I would actually offer a slightly more optimistic take on where the economy overall is in the city. We did have pretty strong wage growth in the past year. All the main tax streams are up. Sales tax, income tax, property tax. We had the best year of commercial leasing in New York City that we've had in 20 years. Remember, we were worried that office space was dead. Well, it's not dead in New York right now. It's even extending to class B. And while we didn't quite achieve pre pandemic levels of tourism, we hit 65 million last year, which is better than a Lot of us expected. On the other hand, new hiring in New York City has, or job creation in New York City has really come to a screeching halt. And this is an issue we are simply not talking enough about. If you exclude a single category of jobs, which is home health care aids, then we actually lost jobs in the private sector last year. We lost 38,000 jobs in the private sector last year, including in finance. And you know this. If you talk to young people who are trying to break into the workforce, including young people with good college degrees. And it's very hard to get an entry level job right now. And I'm worried that this trend will accelerate because of the impact of AI, which we may be seeing now. Economists disagree on that, but I am quite convinced we will see soon. And this has huge impacts for New York City. We've, we've got to reverse this trend. We've got, we've got to, we've got to get back to creating jobs in New York City. In part, when we make New York City more affordable, when we improve quality of life here, we make New York City safer. When we improve mass transit, that's actually good for job because it's going to make employers more likely to want to hire here because for one thing, it's, it's, it's more affordable for their employees to live here and more desirable. So that is in part a job creation strategy. But there's much more. We've got to make it easier to start and grow a business in New York. And that's going to require streamlining, permitting, make it faster to get permitting, reducing all the bureaucratic, bureaucratic burdens and all the many obstacles it takes to grow a business here. We're also going to have to, I think, move faster in our schools, Ben, to adjust to a very fast changing job market. We're just not keeping up right now. We need to have a much tighter feedback loop between employers and schools to influence curriculum at CUNY and in the public schools. Look, I don't know exactly what the jobs are going to be in five years. This is part of the problem. But I know we're going to need more technical fluency among young people in every single career, even careers that are not explicitly technical. And I think we're going to have to teach young people durable job skills like problem solving, critical thinking. I think we need to be honest about competition from other parts of the country. And look, we are not seeing, despite what you might read on Twitter, we're not seeing a mass exodus of employers From New York, we're really not. But the growth then is happening elsewhere. And you look at major companies like Goldman Sachs or BlackRock or JP Morgan, and they have a strong base in New York, and that is not changing. But all of their growth is happening in other parts of the country, particularly Texas. It's great that J.P. morgan has a new tower on Park Avenue, but J.P. morgan has more employees in Texas than it has in New York City right now. There's a lot of reasons.
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Okay, go ahead.
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C
Yeah, yeah, look, partly it's cost because everything costs more in New York City, including office space and the cost of construction, I think, and insurance and, and, and taxes are part of that picture, too. We have to be honest about that.
- [35:49]
B
Right.
- [35:51]
C
I think there's also something intangible, which is that I think we as city leaders need to send the message that we want those companies to grow here. And you can you listen at how leaders in other parts of the country talk. And they make it explicit that they want those companies there, that they want those companies to grow and that they're willing to, to bend over backwards. And we haven't had to do that in New York for a very long time. We.
- [36:30]
A
But you did have. I mean, we have had. If you take the last four combined mayors and governors, three out of the four have been very sort of pro business, know, encouraging very publicly, companies to grow in New York. I'm excluding Bill de Blasio from Eric Adams, Andrew Cuomo and Kathy Hochul.
- [36:50]
B
Right.
- [36:50]
A
I mean, you know, that's generally been. Been the message. I mean, obviously there's a very big question mark about Mayor Mamdani, although mostly he struck a tone other than the push for the tax increases, but he struck a broader tone of we want companies to be in New York and to grow in New York. It's true there's different levels, obviously.
- [37:11]
C
Yes. But, but among lawmakers in the city and state level and most elected officials in New York, this is just not on their radar at all. And it's, it's in the culture of politics here. Like we, we have been such a magnet for business for so long that we haven't really had to work to compete.
- [37:39]
A
And so is it more a complacency, as you're saying, or is it more.
- [37:43]
C
Absolutely.
- [37:44]
A
It's not more of an antagonism, though.
- [37:47]
C
Those are, those are, those are related, for sure. And look, we need to demand that workers are treated fairly in New York City. We need to demand that consumers are treated fairly in New York City. And we also need to send the message that we want people to start businesses here and grow businesses here and hire here. And I don't think we have enough messaging on the growth side right now from most elected officials to balance that. And that has an impact. And look, in 1990, we had a third of financial jobs in America and today we have under 18%. We are still the biggest financial industry in the country, but we don't dominate like we used to. There's also competition from abroad as well. And we just.
- [38:39]
A
Everything has become more global, everything's become more national. And I mean, I think you also got at something though too. It's places like Texas and others have, I mean, they've, they've had more space and they've also had much more friendly sort of housing growth and other policies than New York has had, which, which impact the overall environment. Even if, even if taxes were the same, which they're not, you would still have a different picture there because of some of those cost of living issues, housing development, etc. Of course, new York can counteract a lot of that with culture and, and, you know, many other advantages, but it is a tricky picture.
- [39:23]
C
And look, I say all this, Ben, as a Democrat who wants to invest in the city and infrastructure in supporting people who are struggling in addressing our affordability crisis in public education. And to do that, I want this to be a thriving economy. And I also see jobs as the other half of the affordability crisis that we don't talk enough about. And affordable rents aren't much help if you're unemployed. Right. And increasingly that is the fate of young people. They're getting the double whammy that we tell them to do the right thing. They go off to college, they come back to the city, they got a good degree and they can't find housing they can afford, and they can't find a good entry level job. And we have a lot of work to do on both fronts. We're simply not talking enough about making it easier for young people to find
- [40:20]
A
jobs and, and all that in the drum a bit. Yeah, go ahead, go ahead.
- [40:24]
C
Look, this entire conversation is before the dramatic disruptions of AI come.
- [40:31]
A
I was about to raise that. Yes, you've been, you've been banging the drum on that a bit. No, as, as a, you know, as a possible cause of some of these issues with questions about entry level jobs, even among college graduates, questions around whether AI is already displacing some of those opportunities because businesses can do more of that entry level work through AI. I think you Were saying before we're still, we need more study on that and more data on that. But there's some. So say a little bit more about the role of AI. At the same time you're also, I think, I think you've also been saying you're worried about the AI potential AI bubble bursting which is also possible. And there's all these questions around the
- [41:10]
B
growth of the data centers and the
- [41:11]
A
energy needed for those and whether states are going to be putting more limits on those and all that. So there's a lot of questions here on different ends of the economic.
- [41:19]
C
Huge. Look, this is such a big topic that once again we're coming up with another episode that you and I are going to have to do.
- [41:26]
A
I think we're going to have an event here actually. So we'll invite you at New York Law School to talk about tech and the economy and AI. So we'll get to that.
- [41:35]
C
I would love to be part of it.
- [41:36]
A
Yeah, go ahead.
- [41:38]
C
Look, it's, it, it is difficult to predict exactly which direction this is going to go in. And it could mean the super, the supercharging of our stock market. It could also mean a collapse in our stock market. New York City, New York City's gotten the upside from the data center build out because they're all financed through New York City. That means if that bubble pops, we get the downside. But sticking to our topic of jobs here for a minute, I am very, very worried that this technology will mean the loss of particularly entry level white collar jobs. And as you said, it's hard to definitively see it in the data. At least economists are not seeing it yet. But man, anecdotally I get a lot of reports of law firms and accounting firms and business service firms who are just bringing in fewer first year hires this year than they did last year and startup tech companies that three years ago would have had 50 people who now have five people and that, that is certainly in part due to AI. And so we could be facing pretty large scale shift in employment in the city. And, and what do we do about that? There's a great deal of city has to do to prepare. But I'll say that it poses a bit of a difficult question. I think it's possible to both be concerned about the impact on AI and also to ask where do we want those technologies to be built? Do we want them to be built in Austin or London or do we want them to be built in New York City? And my feeling is as complicated as all the impact is I'd rather them be built in New York partly because I want us to get the job and economic benefit and tax benefit, partly because I trust New Yorkers to build those technologies because we're a diverse city and I'd rather the people building those tools be riding the New York City subway every day, not living in a, in a suburb in suburban Texas.
- [43:55]
A
And so I mean, of some of the debate over whether Amazon HQ2 should come here, but we won't get into that now. Yeah, in our last two minutes here, the Mamdani administration is going to be naming a new head of the Economic Development Corporation at some point. That's one of the city's key engines for encouraging economic growth. You would assume the Mandani administration will have sort of an economic growth jobs plan at some point. Anything we haven't talked about that need
- [44:28]
B
to be key pillars of that.
- [44:29]
A
You've obviously talked about ways in which, you know, there can be a more inviting economic business climate, the schools component and more alignment with CUNY especially anything else that needs to be.
- [44:42]
C
Look, I, I am extremely interested in this disappointment and President of edc. There's a lot riding on it. It's always an important agency. But now because of the challenges that we've been talking about, this is a very high stakes appointment, in my opinion. And it's critical that this agency kick into overdrive on, on attracting business investment in New York. They've had some success in EDC at identifying the sectors which are growing even amidst all this economic turbulence. Life Sciences is a bright spot for New York City technology, cutting edge manufacturing. These are growth sectors in New York in part because EDC has nurtured them by building out infrastructure, by using city owned properties to create places like wet labs for life science startups and incubating small businesses in these sectors. We can take that to the next level by continuing to use our portfolio of city owned properties and other financing tools. We have to build on the strengths of those sectors. So EDC is a very, very important agency right now and I hope that it takes its work to the next level.
- [46:11]
A
Yeah, I was going to say there are a variety of projects on city owned land that even the Adams administration got going. But the Mamdani administration, the city will have a lot of say in terms of how they really unfold. The Brooklyn Marine Terminal, the Kingsbridge Armory, there's others. And so that'll be very interesting as a new leadership at EDC and the Mamdani administration figure a lot of that out. And you also reminded me with what you're talking about about AI. The governor, you know, and the state passed this empire AI program. It's a lot of it's based in in Buffalo, but it's got, you know, connections to the city and other parts of the state. And I think it'll be very interesting how the city administration and others sort of try to also harness some of what's what's happening around.
- [46:54]
C
The governor deserves a lot of credit for that. And it does impact New York because there's a big role for cuny.
- [47:00]
A
Yeah.
- [47:00]
C
And helping to prepare young people for careers in AI. This is definitely a great program. We need a lot more like it.
- [47:08]
B
All right.
- [47:08]
A
We'll leave it there. City Comptroller Mark Levine, thanks again for the time and the thoughts, and we'll stay in touch.
- [47:14]
C
Ben, a real pleasure. Thanks, man.
- [47:15]
A
Be well.