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Comptroller Mark Levine on Mayor Mamdani's First Budget & the City's Fiscal Health
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New York City Comptroller Mark Levine, a Democrat…
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Foreign.
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Hello and welcome to MAX Politics. This is Ben Max coming to you from New York Law School in its center for New York City and State Law. Thanks for tuning in. Speaking here late in the day on Tuesday, February 17, 2026, a few hours after Mayor Zoram Mamdani released the first budget plan of his still very new administration. It is the mayor's preliminary budget, which includes an update to the current fiscal year budget, a balanced budget plan for the next fiscal year, and some forecasting of what are called the out years, the next three fiscal years. So in just about six weeks in office, Mamdani and his team, led by First Deputy Mayor Dean Fulahan and Budget Director Sharif Solomon, had to put together a rebalanced budget for the current 2026 fiscal year, which runs through the end of June, and and a budget plan for fiscal year 2027, which begins July 1st of this year. And in doing so, they had to take into account some pretty challenging fiscal dynamics, though of course, the degree to which Mamdani has correctly assessed them and created plans for dealing with them are a matter of some debate. And if you've listened to recent episodes of the show here, you heard me with the president of Citizens Budget Commission, Andrew Ryan, having some of that discussion already. And my guest today will weigh in on all of that and more. New York City Comptroller Mark Levine, a Democrat who is essentially the city's chief financial officer, will be with me in a moment and give his assessment of the city's fiscal picture and how Mayor Mamdani is dealing with it, as well as what comes next and how to get the city on strong fiscal footing while providing strong services to New Yorkers. Comptroller Levine, like the new mayor, was elected in November to a citywide position for the first time. He was previously Manhattan Borough president and before that a member of the New York City Council. As comptroller, he's responsible for oversight of the city budget and city services, for auditing city agencies, reviewing city contracts, and much more. He has limited say in how exactly the city budget is actually designed. That's really up to the mayor and the City Council, but the city comptroller has a big voice in the process, and even more so if the office holder decides to use it to maximum effect and in a way that perhaps contradicts the mayor in any important way because that will of course, impact the budget process and debate and draw more media attention. And getting into a lot of differences of opinion here with Comptroller Levine in just a minute to discuss Mayor Mamdani's preliminary budget and the city's fiscal health, which according to both is in very precarious shape, largely due to practices of recent years under Mayor Eric Adams and the City Council. He negotiated the budget with where they under budgeted for significantly growing expenses like rental vouchers, shelter costs, judgments and claims against the city, police, overtime and others. And after decrying in January what he termed the Adams budget crisis and blaming the former mayor for gross fiscal mismanagement, leaving large budget gaps for him to close, Mayor Mamdani presented a budget here on February 17, reflecting more accurate planned spending amounts by quite a few billion dollars. The mayor presented a rebalance budget for the current fiscal year, which wasn't too difficult given given that tax revenues have come in above projections. But he also presented a balanced $127 billion budget for next fiscal year 2027, which again begins July 1st of this year. But to get to that balanced budget for next fiscal year, Mamdani had to close what he said was a $10 billion gap. And after tax revenue re estimates, several mechanisms, including agency savings estimates and some new additional state aid that Governor Hochul has promised. Mamdani said the gap for next fiscal year was down to $5.4 billion to be fully closed. According to the mayor, only one of two ways. There's the path he's been calling for and continues to call for, which is increased taxes on high earners and corporations to bring billions more revenue to the city that would need approval from the state. Or the path he used in balancing his preliminary budget, which he says he does not want to actually use when it comes time, which is a significant increase in the only taxes the city really controls, property taxes. Now, Comptroller Levine, who will join me in just a moment, and many others believe there's another path to close the remaining gap. And we'll get into that shortly. Governor Kathy Hochul, the most important and powerful figure in all this, is opposed to further tax increases at this time on the personal income and corporate tax fronts at least. And she must negotiate a new state budget with the legislature ahead of the state's new fiscal year, which begins April 1. Although the state is often a bit late with its budget plan, just about everyone, including Mamdani, is actually against property tax increases, but he is using it as certainly as a negotiating tactic here in the early going of his administration. Now some believe there's room for more reining in of city spending, more state aid that's not based on those tax increases, among other mechanisms and we'll get into some of that in this conversation. Mamdani's Next Budget plan, the executive budget, is due May 1, and if the state is relatively timely with its spending plan, the mayor will be able to put a lot more certainty into his executive budget around what the city is and isn't getting from the state, any changes in tax policy and how they may lead to more revenue for the city, and so on. There'll be a whole bunch of City Council hearings coming up real soon on the mayor's preliminary budget and much more going on at both the state and the city levels on the budget front, and we'll be digging into plenty of it here on the podcast, don't you worry. Meanwhile, there's other huge variables at play like federal funding and actions by the Trump administration that could impact the city's bottom line, like ongoing issues with tariffs, massive federal immigration raids that could be coming to New York. And it's worth underscoring as well that we don't know the degree to which tax revenues will come into the city and state at higher or lower levels than projected, among other variables. Now, as part of his plan, Mamdani is calling on the state to increase taxes on high income earners and corporations, but getting a lot of blowback from some corners on those calls. While of course his base that elected him to office is supportive for now, Mamdani's $127 billion fiscal year 2027 preliminary budget assumes a 9.5% property tax rate increase, generating what the city projects is $3.7 billion of revenue for next fiscal year, along with some use of the city's reserves. Those would be the two key mechanisms to get the remaining budget gap closed in Mamdani's current plan. That's a gap that exists because the city is now finally being more clear eyed in adding well over $10 billion in city funded agency expenses changes across the two fiscal years, filling in those under budgeted expenses. So none of this gets to several of the new Democratic socialist mayor's expansionist plans beyond the increase in child care that he and Governor Hochul have already come to an agreement on with the help of additional state funding that is going to be in the state budget and heading to the city, although exact amounts are still up for negotiation with the legislature. A lot more on both child care and Mamdani's other plans like free buses and city run grocery stores here on the podcast in the coming weeks. Speaking of other conversations here on the podcast, if you missed any other recent ones I've had some great guests, including a conversation on Mayor Mamdani's recent state budget testimony in Albany, where the former assembly member returned to talk to the Legislature about the governor's budget and his own spending, as well as here on the show, I had Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso talking about his campaign for Congress in New York's 7th congressional district and some other great guests. I mentioned Andrew Ryan of Citizens Budget Commission as well and more. And by the way, Reynoso's leading competitor in that congressional race, assembly member Claire Valdez, is coming up next on the podcast here very soon. So after you listen to this conversation with Comptroller Levine, plenty to catch up on if you've missed any, and there's much more to come. All right, New York City Comptroller Mark Levine is here. Thanks for joining me on Preliminary budget day, February 17, 2026. How are you?
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I'm doing great, Ben. It's been a hectic day, but excited to be on the podcast. Been wanting to come on for months. And here we are on one of the biggest days for the New York City budget in years. There you go.
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Perfect timing to talk before we dig in on the city budget. Six weeks or so for you in the new job citywide perch here. How's it going? How's the transition period been?
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I'm absolutely loving it. This job is just so substantial. I think that's true at any time. But now more than ever, with all the challenges we face on the economy and the budget, I think the comptroller's office is really central right now to moving New York City ahead. I'm learning a lot. It's a big team and a big portfolio, but there's nowhere I'd rather be right now.
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B
All right, very good. And explain for people a little bit how you characterize your role in the city budget process. I think, you know, there's a lot of people out there, if they know about the comptroller, they sort of assume that the comptroller has perhaps more say in the city budget than you actually do. You have an outsized voice in terms of your sort of influence on the process. But how do you capture for people what your your role is, is here in the city budget process?
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Look, because of our institutional role on so many aspects of finances in New York, from reviewing and registering contracts to co issuer of the city's debt, overseeing the city's pension funds, obviously audit and oversight, it, it gives us leverage on the budget in direct and indirect ways that add up to Something pretty substantial. And, and I'm speaking out, I have spoken out because I think it's. It's one of the central obligations of this office.
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B
So capture for people, even before we get a Mayor Mamdani preliminary budget here, capture for people where we are in the city's budget picture. I think a lot of people, especially people who would be listening to a podcast, you know, focused on city government and politics, know, you know, there's a challenging fiscal picture for the city, some budget gaps. You know, people have at least heard probably Mayor Mamdani pointing the finger at Mayor Adams and so forth. But how do you sort of capture for people the city's current fiscal situation? Enormous budget, well over $120 billion at this point. Lots of tax revenue coming into the city, but also some serious fiscal challenges here. How do you capture it?
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A
Look, this is a moment of real contradictions for our budget and our economy. The economy is doing well. It's a solid economy right now. There are real challenges, especially for working class families, that I'd be happy to talk about. But revenue is strong across every class of, of tax income. Receipts are up. We're doing good on income tax and property tax, sales tax, corporate tax. We are not in the midst of a recession or an economic shock. So the fact that we are having this conversation about a budget crisis is pretty remarkable and I think should give us all pause for introspection about what went wrong and what are the systems we have to fix. This shouldn't be a city that in an otherwise strong economy with strong tax income, we're being forced into such difficult discussions amidst the fiscal crisis. And I obviously have a lot of thoughts about how we got into this mess and how we got out. But that big picture also should give us some hope. We are not having this conversation, Ben, after. In the wake of 911 or in the 2008 financial crisis or during COVID there's a lot about the pillars of New York City's economy are still strong. Not just. You don't just see it in tax revenue. Tourism's come bouncing back. Rental of office spaces, commercial leasing is the best it's been in 20 years. Broadway attendance is up to pre pandemic. There's just many, many signs of our strength. And so that should ultimately give us confidence that we can work our way through this crisis.
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Give me your top line, though, on how we got here. As you just said, there should be, you know, it should be a real moment of introspection. I know you've been doing some of That I know you've been now in this office that has a lot more ability to really dig into the numbers and the, and the picture here than as Manhattan Borough president. You've been doing some of that and you've been outlining some of that coming in right away and sort of sounding the alarm on the budget gaps and the financial picture. Talking at the state legislative budget, hearing about this and obviously now, you know, sort of giving some initial reaction to the mayor's preliminary budget. What is your short sort of answer on how we got here? Is it as simple as sort of. Mayor Mamdani has pointed out that there was, you know, a lot of under budgeting of known expenses and we kept kind of being able to shuffle things around and pay for it, but it was structurally problematic or is there more to it than that?
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Under budgeting is just massive. We've had a series of large and fast growing expenses in the city budget, often really good and important programs that we just didn't prepare for in the budget. And we kept rolling that forward. The gap got bigger and bigger. And I really am grateful that Mayor Mamdani is, is speaking honestly about that and not attempting to, to kick that can down the road anymore. In the last year particularly, we had a series of, of one shot budget measures which are exhausted now and can't be repeated. And that just makes it tougher. We're in a tougher spot now for sure. And you know, we've also had a lot of uncertainty and revenue projections that are, that I think are going to have to be part of a long term conversation. The United States Congress has the Congressional Budget Office and they set a revenue number and you move from there. And here we don't really have a fixed revenue number. And each arm of government determines its own projection. And that just adds another layer of uncertainty. And I'm worried that this year again, we don't have our revenue projections. Right. We can talk about that. It all, it all adds up to a multibillion dollar gap in the midst of otherwise a strong economy. And that's just not acceptable and not sustainable.
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B
All right, so the mayor comes in, he's faced with these gaps now basically the gap for the current fiscal year, a couple billion dollars, is sort of quickly wiped away with a revenue re estimate because tax revenue is coming in stronger than expected and not a huge issue to close the gap. That's, you know, we're in the middle of a fiscal year, fiscal year 2026. No huge issue there because even though there's a gap that can kind of be filled by this increased tax revenue. Fair to say that, or too simple.
- [16:24]
A
I'm much more worried about fiscal year 27 than I am fiscal year 26 at this point. Right.
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B
So, okay, so then we look at fiscal year 27, which begins July 1st of 2026. People often need that remind that that that's, you know, sort of how the fiscal years are named and where they begin and end. So that's coming up soon. That's the mayor's got to present this preliminary budget and that's where there's estimates out of your office for roughly a $10 billion gap that he's coming into. Some say a little bit more, some say a little bit less. But having to close that gap, then he's got increased revenue to work with. That wasn't included there. That was still numbers, still coming in, a bit more help from the state, a little bit of in your revenue, but still facing what the mayor is saying is more than a $5 billion gap to fill after taking into account the higher than projected revenue, some additional help from the state and a few other things. So talk a little bit about the mayor facing then that gap and the choices in front of him. How do you see the choices with a mayor facing five plus? I mean, the city facing a five plus billion dollar budget gap for the fiscal year that begins July 1, just in a few months. How do you see that picture? How do you see the choices in front of a mayor and city council and rest of the city that has to navigate this? With, of course, oversight from your office, the state level and so forth?
- [17:52]
A
Well, first, on the scale of the gap, I'm worried that the mayor actually might be understating it. On revenue, we see the same numbers that the mayor's side does. We get daily updates on personal income tax, and we're doing an analysis that will be ready on March 11th where we'll update the numbers we issued a few weeks ago. But I think it's fair to say my team and most people we talk to feel like they're being pretty aggressive on revenue projections. They might be end up being right and I hope, but they're on the aggressive end we've talked about under budgeting and the mayor deserve a lot of credit for now putting in an accurate assessment of the current housing voucher program known as CityFEPS, which is growing at pretty astounding rate of 4 to 5% a month. But as you know, Ben, there's a major expansion of that housing voucher program that's tied up in court and the, the mayor had pledged in the campaign to drop his opposition to allow the expansion to move forward. That's going to have to be negotiated. Right. The court is now involved and the mayor's projections assume zero additional cost or no expansion whatsoever. And I think that's unlikely. I think there'll be a negotiation. There could be a compromise. But to assume there'll be no expansion whatsoever, I think is, is unlikely. And so I think that has to be factored into our view of the out year gap. And then I'll point out that some of the savings which the mayor's accounted for are not yet specified. They're, they're essentially placeholders on efficiencies that, that we hope to gain in the budget. And you know, you always have to be a little bit vigilant until the specific measures are specified. So this, this is a very real challenge. It may be worth that worse than what we're projecting. And we have the backdrop of a hostile federal government and pretty chronic mismanagement of the economy by the president and all the uncertainty that that creates. So this challenge is real. I don't know if you want to talk about solutions yet, but.
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B
Yeah, well, I mean, what, but again, what do you see as the choices in front of him? I mean, go ahead and get into the solutions. I mean, that's the thing is if the mayor is coming in and saying, okay, I have a savings program now you can give us your assessment if it's ambitious enough of a savings program. I know there's some people who are worried that, you know, it might actually cut off, you know, more than just the extra fat. It might, it might be too, too many, you know, agency savings that he's looking for too much on that side. But I think generally speaking people are pleased to see a savings program from the mayor. But he's got one of those in place with these chief savings officers that he's ordered and he's got targets. It's basically a program to eliminate the gap by another name at this point. But you know, he's got that in place. But then again getting some more help from the state, higher tax revenue than expected. But once accounting for these under budget expenses at more accurate levels, facing this sizable gap, there's only, there's only a few choices here, right? I mean it's more revenue or more savings. So how do you sort of see the choices and, and, and some of the ways that he started to, to plug that gap?
- [21:34]
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Well, look, when you're in a Hole this deep, there's no easy choices. There's only a list of challenging options and a lot of trade offs. I do not think we should raise property taxes. I feel like it's a flawed system that's deeply inequitable, that an increase would particularly be a burden on working class homeowners and black and brown communities, most notably. And we should be having a conversation about fixing those inequalities. But that's not going to be done in the next few weeks. So in the meantime, to add to that system I just think is a mistake. There's not enough conversation about one component of the mayor's plan, which is to draw down our city's reserves. And I realize the public doesn't probably focus too much on this, but now we're entering a time of real uncertainty, I might even say potentially turbulence ahead, partly because of the economic uncertainty driven by all the challenges coming out of Washington, also because of this incredibly fast paced technological change that has the potential to lead to job disruption and I would argue the potential to disrupt our tax base, which I can talk about if you want. So for all those reasons, I think we should be increasing reserves. And to be drawing down on reserves again in the mix of a strong economy with, with growing tax revenue is highly unusual. We didn't draw down reserves in covet, for example, and to, to do it now.
- [23:19]
B
Well, there was, there was a bit used that first budget in 2020, but I think it was fair enough.
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And we did get enormous federal assistance.
- [23:26]
B
So, so there was even federal assistance. I was looking back at this recently. There was even federal assistance in 2020 while President Trump was still in office. It wasn't nearly as much as the need or as much as, you know, mayors and governors and others were calling for. And a lot more came obviously once Biden took office. But there was even a little bit of federal help to help balance that. That first.
- [23:48]
A
Yeah, fair point, Ben. But unless, unless I'm unaware of it, there's no case of a significant drawdown in reserves outside of a, a major shock and economic or other shock.
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B
Right. They're there for a Covid or a Great Recession, not for a time like this.
- [24:04]
A
Yeah. And in fact, there's rules on the rating day fund and they bump up right against the max for what they're allowed to take out outside of an economic shock. But joined down the reserves leaves us a lot more vulnerable in the year ahead when, as I said, I worry we're facing uncertainty. And another measure they employed, which have not heard anyone remark on so far, we often roll over prepaid expenses. It's, it's sort of like a de facto reserve. It's just a prudent way to, if you're doing okay this year, give yourself a cushion next year. And we rolled over about 3 billion into this current fiscal year. And the mayor's proposal today shows that being entirely drawn down. And you know, that in effect means that in this current fiscal year 26, we'll ultimately spend 3 billion more than we take in, in revenue. But more importantly, just it leaves us without a cushion for the coming year. That has not been remarked on, that I've seen, but it's just another vulnerability that would be passed into the coming year. So, you know, I really want us to avoid having to draw on those strategies.
- [25:24]
B
You like savings plans that are reasonable and targeted, I assume.
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A
Yeah, I want to say more on the savings plans and the efficiencies and I want to say more on getting our fair share from Albany, which I don't believe we do today. And I testified to this in some detail when I spoke at 10 Cup Day last week. And I didn't make it subjective. I talked about the big picture, that we're both an economic engine for New York State that helps to subsidize state operations, but we're also home to the largest number of low income households. We have 2 million people living in poverty in New York and over 400,000 of them are children. And so it's another contradiction where we're both a generation generator of a lot of wealth and we're also home to a lot of people who are struggling. And I think that that should inform how the state treats us. And we're not treated fairly in a whole host of programs where either the city pays more than other parts of the state or gets reimbursed less than other parts of the state. Just blatant examples. The way we do public health funding in New York is called something called Article 6. And we're reimbursed at 20% and the rest of the state's reimbursed at 36%. And there's, there's no defense of that. There's no, you know, policy principle there. And it cost us 90, 90 million a year. I think that was mostly or, or even close to entirely remedied. And the agreement that the mayor and the governor came to over the weekend, which I'm very happy about. But, but there's a, there's a host of ways where we're just not getting our fair share and we, we need to keep pushing on that. And I, I will join the mayor and pushing on that. I, I want us to get more of our fair share out of state government. I also think that we're probably going to be forced to do more on efficiencies. The mayor, they're not calling it a peg, but de facto peg, which will. Details of which would be announced on May 20, on March 20. Look, honestly, I would have loved to have seen a peg put into place in January. They're always painful. But the way these things work, the later you wait in the year, the bigger the peg has to be to get a given dollar savings, which I think that makes sense. Tell me if it doesn't. But because the scale of the challenge was apparent when we all got here in January, I would have probably preferred to see a peg in January.
- [28:08]
B
I mean, it was the end of January. But he signed this executive order with the chief savings officer as, I mean, he gave him 45 days, which seems fairly reasonable. Obviously, he came out with new numbers today. The mayor, about the targets, which again gets us much more closer to sort of the usual program to eliminate a gap where, where there's real target hits on the savings and all that. And it's, it's now more than he initially sort of said as a placeholder.
- [28:34]
A
I feel we might have to go higher than the 1.5% proposed for this year and 2.5% proposed next year. And look, I don't minimize the implications of what I just said, that these, these come at real, real cost to the agencies. It's hard. Yeah, but we're choosing from a list of tough alternatives. And I think we are going to have to look at deeper efficiency, savings and then just kind of the programmatic stuff, Ben, which we've talked about a little bit here. I've already mentioned cityfeps, but it's just not sustainable right now. And it is a really important program. We're in the midst of the worst housing affordability crisis in New York City history. We're in the midst of a terrible homeless crisis with almost 90, 000 people in the shelters nightly. And, and this is a way of getting people out of shelters and into homes. So it's a very important program. It is not currently accounted for in the budget. Mary Mandani is changing that, but the cost is growing at an unsustainable pace. And so, you know, I fear that the program is going to have to be reconfigured in some way to make it more manageable. Our schools, you know, we've lost you. And I remember when we used to say we had 1.1 million kids in our public schools. That was the number that we probably all had in our head for a long time. And we're now down below 900,000 and we've lost a hundred thousand just in the last five years or so. And the budget has gone up. Not talking about the budget per student, the budget overall has gone up and in a time of declining enrollment, and There are now 200 schools across the city that have 200 students or less. I think that may be an approximate number, but that's generally the picture. And it's just much more expensive to run schools when they fall to such low enrollment. And mergers are painful and always unpopular. But it's the kind of thing that we may be forced to do to find some savings. You know, if you have a school with 125 students in a school with 140 students, if you merge, you can, you can have a strong school that what would.
- [30:55]
B
Still not a very big school.
- [30:56]
A
Yeah, even then. Even then. But you, you could save some money in that kind of consolidation. So that, you know that. I think there's going to be some questions in the, in the, and the school budget that we have to look to as, as well. So look, these, none of these are easy, but I think that if you combine more help from Albany with more efficiency, with some tough programmatic moves that we, that we can get there.
- [31:27]
B
So you obviously made clear you don't think raising property tax is the answer. You know, again, for the record, Mayor Mamdani put that in his budget because he needed to show a balanced budget and it's the lever that the city can pull for more revenue. And he said, I don't want to be doing this, and it's absolutely not the answer I want. But he painted it as either that or a combination of more state aid and rebalancing the fiscal picture you're talking about. Plus, of course, what we haven't talked about yet that I want your take on is his ongoing call for increased taxes on high earners and corporations. We've seen some other voices in this process, you know, oppose those calls for tax increases, chiefly the governor, of course, who has the biggest say in what happens on the state level on those policies, although the legislature, of course, has a major voice there too. We've seen City Council Speaker Julie Menon not exactly come out against, but more or less come out against those calls for tax increases. But she certainly doesn't want to the property tax increases. What do you think about that? As part of the picture, we did see public. Not that he has a big voice in this process, but public advocate Jumani Williams, a third citywide elected official, did express support for Mayor Mamdani's calls for tax increases here. So where are you on those? And is there sort of a middle ground here that no one's quite talked about yet, which is not quite the full tax increase picture that the mayor wants, but not quite. No tax increases at, you know, through the state level that could be a smaller part of this picture than the mayor wants it to be.
- [33:09]
A
Look, with a fiscal challenge this big, I think everything, everything needs to be on the table. And I certainly support progressive taxation. My preference is always that it be on the national level because you avoid states playing off each other. But, but we need it at the local level, too. Part of the reason why I oppose a property tax increase is because it would be a regressive form of taxation. My goal is to close the gap and I want to use every tool we can to get there. I think that it probably can be closed with more budget assistance from the state government and the measures I outlined here. So that's where my focus has been for now. But again, not all options need to be on the table.
- [34:01]
B
Right. And we're not talking about. Well, you're got, you got into some of the specifics about some of the ways that there are certain programs where the state could take on or retake on some of the expense that has been passed to the city. The governor, mayor already announced, as you mentioned, some of that shift back. And the governor is looking to be helpful to the city here, certainly while also avoiding more of the mayor's push on the tax increases. There's obviously that dance going on and that will continue to happen. But what we're not talking about here is there's a number of other ways that the state can often find money to send to the city that we're, you know, sort of alluding to. That is not personal income tax increases or corporate tax increases.
- [34:41]
A
Do you know what AIM is aid for individual municipalities? I mean, it's just worth commenting that we're, we're the only municipality that doesn't get this form of assistance. And if we got what other parts of the state get on a per capita basis, It'd be over $2 billion. It's just a huge, a huge imbalance in how we're treated relative to the rest of the state.
- [35:05]
B
Right. And again, we're still relatively early in this process. So there is a lot of reason to believe that the governor legislature will be increasing the state's aid to the city. And if the governor gets her way, and maybe lots of the legislature, since it's an election year for them as well, that will likely be without some of those tax increases. But I was also getting at, you know, absolutely. What you're referencing in terms of various state, you know, programmatic funding issues and ongoing issues. But then the state often has a way and many levers to pull in terms of creating new fees on things and taxes that are not at personal income or corporate taxes. You know, we've seen the state get creative over the years in terms of ways to bring in new revenue, whether it's for the new casinos or it's online gambling or online purchases. I mean, many things where the state has pulled levers to bring in new revenue. Part of the reason that the state has itself a 260 billion dollar budget and growing and one, and one more
- [36:06]
A
reason, Ben, is that they get proportionally a bigger upside on Wall street because unlike New York, they don't have a big, the big property tax component. So we've gotten a big updraft from Wall street and the best bonus season ever. But proportionally the state benefits even more. And it's why I'm confident they can help us out beyond what they've offered so far.
- [36:35]
B
Yeah, that makes, I mean that make. That makes a lot of sense. Say a little bit to take people inside a little bit. The mayor gives you as the comptroller a budget briefing before he goes to the public. He also does a briefing for the city council speaker Julie Menon and city council members. I believe the comptrollers briefing is often done in conjunction with the public advocate briefing. I think that's what happened. But correct me if I'm wrong.
- [37:00]
A
That's right.
- [37:01]
B
Okay, so the mayor's there with some of his team, you, public advocate Jumani Williams and others. What was that like? I mean, this is the first time that it's that it's that group. I know you're not going to divulge private conversation, but just what was it like and whatever you want to say in terms of your reaction when the mayor laid out this plan. Plan, you know, that, that you're willing to, you know, sort of fill people in on.
- [37:24]
A
Yeah. Okay. I'd had this briefing as a city council member for many years and as a generally as borough president, you also take part in that same briefing. It's very different though. It's, you know, 50, 75 people in the room. And this was myself and public advocate, and each of us had had an aide with us. And it was a really frank conversation. And I want to give the mayor credit because I felt like he was honestly confronting the scale of the challenge. I didn't feel like he was trying to, to sugarcoat or spin it, and that was really refreshing. So we had, we had a really productive conversation for a better part of an hour. There are a lot more details that are yet to come. And in, in the next couple of days, my staff is going to be pouring over much more detailed documents. And we're also, as I said, going to be doing our own revenue analysis. So we'll have a lot more to say in a couple of weeks. But, but I felt, at least I'm gratified that we have a mayor who's taking this seriously, who's ending. Attempting to end the practice of under budgeting. And that's the only hope for, for fixing the systemic problems going forward.
- [38:49]
B
Now, you've been around politics, and especially city politics a lot longer than the mayor, which obviously isn't hard given his, his limited time in government and his six weeks in city government. But when he said, I'm going to, I'm showing a filling of this gap through property tax increases, did you say, are you crazy? Did you say, this is political suicide? Did you warn him that that's a. I mean, I imagine he had a sense of the gamble he's taking here, but that's a very big choice to make.
- [39:27]
A
I think I might have described it as the nuclear option. Yeah, it's because of the politics and because of the real substantive challenges that we have there. And I. Look, he did, to be clear, he has not said this is preference. He's offered a different option. I would argue that there's a third option. What we've been talking about here. I don't think, I don't think.
- [39:52]
B
Right. He's got some of that in his mix. But not that you're saying, right?
- [39:57]
A
Yes, that's right. So, you know, I don't think I've heard a single person come out in defense today of raising property tax taxes. And honestly, not the mayor either. Like, no, no one wants to do it. I think it's going to be on all of us to do the hard work to avoid it, but there are no easy alternatives. It's just going to be choosing from a list of tough options.
- [40:17]
B
You know my sense, and I know we only have a Couple more minutes together here. But my sense is, you know, in, in pat in the past, especially in the recent past. But, but for a while, going back, even under Mayor de Blasio, who was calling for more progressive taxation, you know, via the state level, as we all know. But, but even under him, there was virtually no discussion of raising property taxes. When faced with these challenges, it was like, okay, there's going to be painful cuts to city agencies and services. And it seems like Mayor Mamdani totally wanted to avoid that beyond, you know, what's sort of findable and efficient and some of what we talked about here, because that's not his politics. He's was very critical of Eric Adams for doing that. You know, he and his allies would call that austerity politics, but that seemingly would be the other option would be to show New Yorkers as opposed to these property tax increases to fill this gap here would be the agency and service cuts that we'd need to go.
- [41:19]
A
Or maybe to offer a third option. Yeah, that, that's a possibility. Yeah. Look, we've been in, I've been in government 12 years. I've never seen a budget this challenging. And I think we've, we now understand that was partly because we were masking the challenges and pushing them forward to our years. And I give the mayor credit for getting it out in the open as he did. You know, if I could say one, one big picture thing, I think we are not talking enough about the need to be caretakers of our economy and the what it would mean to have a growing economy with growing employment. It would solve a lot of these problems without the kind of painful trade offs that you and I have spent this whole show talking about. And if God forbid, the opposite happens and we do face real an economic downturn, we are, we're going to be looking back on this as a fairly easy, easy budget relative to what we could face ahead. And I think all of it is complicated by the disruptions ahead from, from AI that that really could lead to loss of jobs, potentially creation of new ones as well, but real turbulence for us. So I, I, while we're battling to get to a balanced budget that preserves critical services for the city between now and June, we can't take our eye off the broader imperative of building a healthy economy that's growing and creating opportunity for everybody and that attacks the terrible inequality that we're seeing now as low income people are suffering not just from unaffordable housing, but also a job market which makes it harder and harder to
- [43:25]
B
break in now, Is that a call? Is that another part of opposing the tax increases on high earners and corporations? Is that a call for the Mamdani administration to present more of an economic growth plan? Is that more just an eye on the sort of national picture? Give me a little more, you know, what's, what's the sort of substance underneath that? I mean, that makes a lot of sense in terms of a growing economy could help. Yeah.
- [43:53]
A
New York City needs a growth plan. And if we have more time where I can come on again, I could talk to you about what I think the pillars of that are.
- [44:00]
B
Yeah.
- [44:01]
A
The moment administration is in its early days, they haven't filled out some key positions, including leadership of edc. So I'm not, I wouldn't expect them to have that on the table yet. But New York City needs to grow, and we need a growth plan to do that and be happy to come on in the future to talk all about how we can make that happen.
- [44:20]
B
Well, I know one of your pillars where I think the mayor agrees is a lot of housing development can really help spur economic growth in a number of ways. So, you know, sort of eager to see the next steps on that from the combination.
- [44:34]
A
I am thrilled by his embrace of the need to expand housing supply and at all kinds of housing. I'm really, I'm really optimistic about that. This is very tough to do in practice, Ben. They're just, they're just so many obstacles and, and we're so far behind. We probably need to build 500,000 units of housing in the next decade, which is roughly doubling our current pace. And I'm going to be pushing very hard for this. You know, I care a lot about it. You and I have talked about it on the show in the past. It looks like we're going to have a lot of episodes to do in the months ahead because I'd like to talk more about that, but, but, boy, we can't take our eye off that. There's not much that we're going to do that's more important than solving our housing shortage and our housing affordability crisis.
- [45:26]
B
Okay, any other last thoughts? I got to let you go here. Comptroller Marcoline really appreciate the time and the thoughts here on preliminary budget day. Anything we didn't get to Any other thoughts? I mean, one of the things, you know, on the list here, which again was remarkably missing from the mayor's discussion for the most part and is missing from contingency plans here, which you mentioned, is federal action. If we see in New York, a massive immigration enforcement operation, you know, a la Minneapolis or, you know, anything like that that could disrupt the city's economy for weeks and months and actually, you know, cost the city in huge way. Obviously not even discussing the, you know, the personal impact on people and families and so forth. But in terms of the discussion we're having here budgetarily, you know, again, to your point that this is not necessarily the time to draw down reserves, you know, that sort of would speak to that. I think what we, what we saw
- [46:27]
A
in Minneapolis is first and foremost a moral catastrophe and just a disaster for, for the people who lost their lives and lost their freedom and have been living in fear for months. But it also happens to be terrible for the economy. And we're already feeling that to some extent in New York. I mean, ICE is active here and I think it's been a drag on our economy. It could get a lot worse if we face a Minneapolis style enforcement action. It just, it's one of a long catalog of, of worries I have from the Trump administration. More tariff insanity, repeated attempts to seize already allocated federal grants that the city relies on. I mean, these. Assaulting the Fed undermines the economy, trust in the economy. It's why I do think this is not the time to be cutting reserves. We want to have a big buffer now for what's ahead.
- [47:35]
B
All right, let me let you go. The only other big thing, in case you want to take one second on this before we say goodbye, that's been on my mind here is there's been a call for a long time from our friends at Citizens Budget Commission and other places, something that former city council member Ben Kalos used to talk about a lot and you know, has come up at the City Council and other places over time, which is sort of like we have this budget conversation, but it's not really tied to sort of agency performance and metrics about what is the actual need and how are agencies actually delivering the specific services stuff you see a lot in the mayor's management report. And it's just again on my mind as, as we talk about, you know, the housing vouchers and, and all these other under budgeted expenses that the city is now coming to terms with that there's still not a great conversation around sort of where is the money, what is the money actually being spent on, what's the need and what's the delivery. And I know you've talked about this where it's like, you know, your right to council legislation that you pass in the city Council, it's like it's actually less expensive to help, you know, keep people in their homes versus paying for the shelter system. And some of those conversations, you know, I think there's not enough, not enough of that as we sort of analyze the budget here.
- [48:55]
A
Oh, my gosh, not at all.
- [48:58]
B
Not to get you started here as we have to say good.
- [48:59]
A
We often allocate money to priorities we care about and then we move on. And we don't ask what's working and how well it's working and what the impact is and whether there might be better ways to spend that money. We have a city government that's stuck in the 1990s. I'm not speaking, and I'm not speaking metaphorically, like we're using technological systems that have been in place for 30 plus years and it's holding us back. And fixing that is part of how we get to a more sustainable fiscal health. That's going to be hard to pull off between now and June 30th. But I am all in on that fight, Ben, because I think for us to be ready for what's coming ahead, we, we've got to drag New York City government into the 21st century at last.
- [49:52]
B
All right, we'll talk more about that another time. We'll talk about your economic growth pillars. We'll talk about housing policy. So part two with control of Levine coming up in the next month or
- [50:02]
A
two, I can't wait. All right. Thank you, Ben, for being a uniquely smart voice on all the challenging policy issues facing the city at I, I listen religiously and it's really fun to be on. Thanks.
- [50:13]
B
I appreciate that. Thanks for joining me. I wouldn't say, I wouldn't say unique by any means, but thank you. I appreciate it. And, and thank you a lot. A lot of people talking, you know, smart policy and budget and all that. So appreciate it. But Comptroller Mark Levine really appreciate the time and thoughts here on a very busy preliminary budget day. And we will definitely be in touch moving forward.
- [50:32]
A
You got it, Ben. All the. Sam, It.