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Mayor Mamdani's $124.7 Billion Executive Budget, with Nick Garber & Annie McDonough
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Journalists Nick Garber and Annie McDonough joine…
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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 and its center for New York City and State Law. Thanks for tuning in. Speaking here on the afternoon of Wednesday, May 13, 2026, and it's the day after Mayor Zoram Mamdani released his executive budget for this budget cycle where the main focus is on the city's 2027 fiscal year, which begins July 1 of this year, the date by which the mayor and the City Council must pass a balanced budget. Mandani's executive budget is a $124.7 billion spending plan for next fiscal year and will soon be the subject of weeks of City Council hearings, just as his preliminary budget plan was earlier this year. Things have changed a lot, however, since Mamdani's preliminary budget, which got a lot of criticism and included the unconvincing threat of a significant property tax increase, as well as potential use of city reserves in order to close the city's multibillion dollar budget gap. But now, thanks to a variety of measures that I'll get into shortly with my guests, the mayor has found different ways to balance the budget and he's in much smoother fiscal waters, at least for now. Remarkably, because of some of the new strategies being used, the executive budget is actually a few billion dollars lower than the preliminary bud, which is unusual in good economic and fiscal times overall. So in a moment, I'll be joined by a pair of great political and policy journalists to break it down and talk about what comes next. Annie McDonough is senior City hall reporter with City and State New York, and Nick Garber covers politics and policy for New York Focus. Before we dig into what is and isn't in Mamdani's budget and how he got to this plan and his relationship with Governor Hochul and potential fault lines still with the City Council and where Mamdani's big priorities stand. Now. Very briefly, if you missed any recent episodes of the show, a lot of good conversations in the feed here at Max Politics. Two highlights to note are I had a really good conversation with State Senate Deputy Leader Michael Gennaros of Queens about state budget negotiations and how Mayor Mamdani's agenda is faring in Albany and more. And it's still quite relevant, even as state budget negotiations seem to be coming together and down the wire. And on the electoral side of things, the June primaries are coming up fast and along with various other congressional candidates in different competitive races that I've had here on the show, my most recent guest was Darielisa Avila Chevalier, who is challenging Congressman Adriano Espaillat from his left in the 13th congressional district primary. So I just had a good conversation with her about her candidacy and I hope to have Congressman Espail on the show soon. So those and plenty of other good ones if you missed any, but after you listen to this one. All right, Nick Garber of New York focus Andy McDonough of City and State New York. Thanks for being here. Hello.
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Thanks for having us.
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Hey, Ben, thanks for taking the time. So let's start 30,000ft here where we're at right now, sort of big picture politics and budget of it all. The mayor's executive budget was delayed to account for the state budget being delayed. There's still no final state budget, but Governor Hochul and the legislature have given the mayor enough room to make assumptions that he was able to slot things into his executive budget here. The city Council's pretty pleased. You know, a lot of sort of cautiously positive comments coming in now. Less choppy waters, as I said, than after the preliminary budget. But Annie, start us off sort of big picture here. How you thinking about where we are, where the mayor's at, you know, what comes next? What's the big picture view here?
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I think he's in strong footing, as you said. I mean, he has despite not getting the governor to go along with his two major tax proposals on on high income earners and major corporations, he's closed this $5 billion budget gap in the executive budget with a lot of help from the state. And despite everything still sort of being in flux in Albany and not having a state budget, it sounds like broadly they're going to be on board with what was announced yesterday in terms of the pension restructuring and and pushing back class size implementation law, all these little moves that sort of add up to help close the budget the state is going to be helping partner in. And he has the governor to thank for that. And he did thank her yesterday. And with the council, I mean, a couple things like Fairfairs might still be in play. But I it's seeming as you noted, kind of cautiously optimistic and friendly between them at the moment.
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Nick?
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Yeah, the mayor is clearly treating this as a political victory to some extent because it's enabled him to back off his incredibly unpopular property tax threat that it seemed like he was never all that serious about to begin with. But intended as a sort of bargaining chip that seems to have fallen pretty flat in Albany. But regardless, he was able to get some revenue proposals that, I mean, I think Importantly for him, he can call them taxing the rich, even though they are not the tax the rich proposals that he campaigned on or initially circulated as part of his sort of wish list to Albany. So, yeah, as Annie said, I think the mayor and council all seem happy, which if there's one thing I've learned from covering city budgets, is that when the mayor and council are both really happy about a budget, then that's probably a good sign that the sort of watchdogs and fiscal hearts will not be happy about it because it usually means there's spending that, you know, is, is nice in the short term, but might come back to bite the city in the long term.
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Yeah, there's definitely some caveats here to, you know, sort of the sunny picture, obviously, and, and some of the budget watchdog, including Comptroller Mark Levine, you know, pointed out some issues that this, this budget that's coming together, avoid some of those potential bigger negatives like a property tax increase or using reserves when they really shouldn't be used because it's not a fiscal emergency. But this, all the things that are happening here aren't really solving the city's sort of medium to long term fiscal footing. So we can get into that a little bit more soon. Again, you know, there's something really interesting going on here where like a new mayor has to come in and within six weeks put out their first budget plan, right, A preliminary budget. And you're just right into the middle of a fiscal year where you have to, you know, try to reprioritize some things, get some of your top campaign promises done in different ways. And so, you know, it's almost as if Mamdani now has gotten to this point and he sort of can take a little. I mean, there's still city council negotiations to come and all that. So this is not over. But, you know, you can take a little bit of a breath here and sort of try to sell some of these wins, and some of them clearly are wins, but then also kind of reset and just kind of get through this budget, which I think is probably the number one goal for a new administration in most cases. Will you go over a little bit, Nick, Why don't you keep going here? Just a little bit of some of these measures that are used to close the budget gap. You know, one of the most striking things is that the biggest piece of this basically is an adjustment to the city's pension obligations. Again, I think some people are sort of misunderstanding this as like, you know, potentially reducing pension payments to retirees. When, you know, that doesn't seem to be really at risk of happening by any means right now. This is sort of just like smoothing out pension fund payments over more years. But that's like a very big chunk of this can only be done really one time here. What are some of the other ways that they're closing this gap with state support and other strategies?
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Yeah, I think the pension deferrals are by far, I think, the largest, you know, upwards of $2 billion over a couple of years. The changes to city FEBs and the class size law are both pretty notable and also very unclear what exactly they consist of. So cityfeps, obviously it's this very costly housing voucher program. The mayor and his aides were adamant yesterday that they are not. I believe they said they're not changing eligibility or at least they said no vouchers will be revoked as a result of the changes that they're pursuing. But I mean, it does seem like there will need to be significant changes made to the program in some way if they're going to save. I think that was at least upwards of $1 billion saved. Saved there. Likewise with the class size law. I think, you know, some kind of deal is coming into focus in Albany. I'm not up to speed on where things are at this second, but nobody really is.
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Yeah, indeed. Yeah, but, but the governor's office is saying it gives the city roughly $500 million in flexibility. So. So a little less spending by the city in the, in the near term. That will eventually have to happen to hire more teachers and build more classrooms and so forth. But.
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Exactly. So those are a couple of the, A couple of the savings.
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Annie, on the savings side, the mayor is touting, you know, that his chief savings officers sort of found a lot of savings. What stands out to you there? They're claiming, you know, billions of dollars in savings over the course of this fiscal year. And next. Does that look solid? I know some people are saying they could have gone further. It's not quite the percentages that other mayors have asked from their agencies. What stands out to you there?
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Yeah, it's that tough line that any mayor has to walk. And I think Mayor Ramdani in particular is particularly tuned into not doing cuts, which was sort of the narrative of the last administration with repeated pegs under Eric Adams. And so these are chief savings officers, which is finding efficiency is, not cuts, which is you always have to sort of like thread the needle of what a cut or efficiency actually is. But the total number they provided yesterday to Kind of have had a rough idea of the preliminary budget was 1.77 billion across agencies. I think around 300,000 of that is from reducing vacant positions. That's. There have been tens of thousands of vacant positions on city books for a long time. And part of that initiative was to sort of cut down what's not needed so that agencies can be able to hire up for what is needed. So that's a sort of concrete chunk of that $1.77 billion. And then it's a whole array, if you go through the savings budget book, of different, like cuts to a consulting contract here, insourcing there, some cuts to spending on, like, office space and things like that. I'm still making my way through that. Who but.
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And then they've got some revenue raisers that are sort of part of that plan, right, like that, that city agencies are going to increase fees on certain things or increase collections in other ways. And some of that seems, you know, pretty necessary that the city's like, leaving all this money on the table. But then there's other ways where, you know, some New Yorkers might wind up feeling like the city's, you know, sort of pinching them for more fees in certain ways or doing other things that are revenue raising mechanisms that are a way for certain city agencies to say, you know, we're sort of meeting these targets that could either be efficiencies or cuts at our agency or increasing revenue to help, you know, the city figure out the budget gap. One of the other biggest pieces here is this pied a terror attacks coming through Albany. As Nick, as you were saying on the class size changes to the state class size requirements, we don't have the full details on the pieta terra tax yet. But basically, correct me if you heard something else, but basically the guarantee here now that the governor is giving the mayor is, as they continue to work out the details in Albany of how this tax will be structured and enforced, they're basically guaranteeing the city they'll come up with a system that they. That projects $500 million a year in revenue, right?
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That's right. Which I mean, is defensible in the sense that if they haven't set the rates yet, then I guess in theory that they can tailor the rates to achieve a desired outcome, keep raising them until they hit 500 million. Again, just in theory, but obviously Comptroller Levine has already put out a report questioning whether that 500 million is totally achievable. He concluded that at least in theory it is. But that given that behavior is likely to change, you know, when people might pull some, some shenanigans to avoid the tax. Right. That it might end up closer to the 300 million range. So, so yeah, it is. I mean, it's, it's quite something and probably not a total paragon of good governance that the city is pedging. It is pegging revenues on a tax that does not exist yet in Albany. It's a. Something that could only happen in New York.
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Well, that, and it's also funny, it reminded me of congestion pricing. Right. Which is like we believe in this policy, but also first and foremost we're going to set the revenue target and then we're going to like figure out, you have to figure out a system to get there because this is actually how we're relying on funding the mta. So it's not just like the traffic reduction mechanisms and things like that. It's like, how do we need to set up a system? Because the first target is the billion dollars in revenue is like a very interesting way to go about it, which again, now they're doing with the PIED A terror tax. What else is in here? So the mayor is also touting investments. You know, this happens basically every budget where there's $10 million here, $20 million there, 40 million. You know, it's like all these things that help you get up to $124.7 billion budget. Now, of course, most of that money is already accounted for each year. It's mostly personnel. But there is some flexibility and there are ways, of course, as revenue continues to come in strong, that the city is adding some spending. Anything interesting in that list to you? Any the things that the mayor was saying? You know, we're adding this, you know, a little bit of this money here, that money there, showing some of his priorities. Again, as I was saying before, I think, you know, I think it's really the next budget that we're going to see the Mamdani stamp on things. But, but you know, he's doing some things. This budget. Anything stand out to you in this sort of long list of things the mayor's office put out that they're touting, you know, increased and shifted investments in?
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Yeah, I think, I mean the, the like overall takeaway that I thought was interesting yesterday was that Mark Levine, comptroller, called new spending conservatives, which is funny to hear about. The, the administration, not typically expected from this administration, but it is fairly small. I mean, the executive budget is overall lower top line number than the preliminary budget. The one area in the presentation yesterday that seemed kind of big was 40 million in funding for the Office of Community Safety, which of course is the sort of quite pared down version of the Department of Community Safety that the mayor proposed on the campaign trail to sort of remake how the city responds to a lot of different safety and social services needs. But one of the big ones was how police respond to mental health calls and sort of shifting some of those responses into non law enforcement resources. It's a much, much smaller effort in effect, that was announced a couple months ago. It's a, you know, office of a couple people at this point and the way it was described to reporters in briefings yesterday, it's an office of overall 270 million or will be around 270 million. But the vast, vast majority of that is funding for offices that already exist and that are being sort of sucked into this new one, like the Office of Community Mental Health and Gun Violence Prevention office. So the 40 million that was announced as, as new funding for this, it technically is new. It's a lot of recurring funding that was sort of one shot funding last year, we're told as being recurring for, for these existing offices. And then there's like around 3 million for the couple of staffers and administrative needs of this totally new aspect. So that is one that, I mean, they say they want to grow it. They say this is sort of the start of the office, but it's certainly a modest start in this budget.
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Yeah, I mean, I count myself as someone who didn't think, knowing that the process is quite involved, that they were going to be able to stand up a new department going through the city council, which is pretty much what you have to, to get a new department established and all that, you know, within this first budget. Again, I mean, that seemed like way too condensed a timeline for that unless they were really coming to a deal with a very aligned, you know, city council speaker. And that obviously wasn't, wasn't happening. So, you know, it seems like again, that'll be sort of budget too for Mamdani to, you know, really look at that along with trying to figure out what the legislation looks like. Council member Lincoln Ressler, who's a pretty close Momdani ally, has a bill to create a Department of Community Safety, you know, so we'll see if anybody's interested in really getting that moving. Wrestler told me, you know, he wants to have a hearing on the bill. And you know, they're, they have intention to, you know, advance that. I mean, I think the thing a Lot of people don't realize, too, about that Mamdani proposal was even when he called it a $1.1 billion department in his campaign plan, more than half of that estimate. Again, this is even a campaign plan which, like those are pretty worthless overall in terms of the details. Over half was estimated to be just managing programs that already exist. So, you know, a lot of the conversation around that office or department, if it becomes one, you know, needs to take some of that into account. Nick, other. Anything that stood out to you in that long list of sort of added investment here, shifted investment there that the mayor's office put out?
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C
Yeah, no, I mean, as Andy said, a lot of it was pretty modest in dollar terms. I mean, one of the things that stood out to me was just in terms of how it was framed. In the presentation that the mayor gave before he even introduced any spending items, they had a slide showing that the new programmatic spending on Mamdani administration initiatives was only 8% of all the new spending, which is just sort of rhetorically an interesting move by the Democratic Socialist mayor to be sort of bragging about how little new spending he's actually introducing. But of course, it makes Sen. You know, given the context of the budget.
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I mean, it's all part of selling this idea that they've had to account for all this spending that wasn't really being accounted for.
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Right, right. And like he said in, I think it was his 100 day speech, you know, he was sort of bragging like sometimes, sometimes you need a democratic socialist to clean up the mess left by. Left by others. One thing that stood out a little separate from the expense budget, but in the capital budget, there is a fairly significant increase in housing capital dollars. It sort of depends what you're using as the baseline. But the New York Housing Conference just put out an analysis saying that it's basically double at least what was in the preliminary for some of the out years. So it's nowhere close to the like $70 billion over a decade that he had campaigned on, which would have required a whole state approval to lift the city's borrowing limit in order to borrow that much money, which then might have raised other concerns about how the city would pay back that debt. But it is, you know, gesturing at least at his. At his campaign promise of, you know, increasing capital dollars for building a lot more housing.
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The other thing that stood out that I forgot about and haven't fully dug in here is, you know, speaking of campaign promises, I know they don't all stick, but he did say he did make some promises about doubling and raising certain agencies budgets, including the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection. It does like there's look like there's a few million in new funding for dwp. And that just sticks out because of how prominent Sam Levine has been as commissioner of that agency and how sort of central that work has been to a lot of their very public releases about how they're holding, you know, bad acting companies accountable, how they're protecting consumers. And so I was interested to see that there's at least some movement in that direction of expanding that agency's resources and potentially staff. Yeah.
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And if people, you know, want to look at the mayor's press release and look at all these, you know, touted investments, you know, it's an interesting list. I mean a lot of it does get at this combination of like indicating some of this mayor's priorities and then also just general things that virtually everyone in government, even you know, Democrats, Republicans alike, want to support, like libraries or parks or cuny. But you know, there's some interesting things in there. You know, some of it again is smoothing over some of the, you know, reductions that had been in his preliminary budget, like to libraries where like that was sort of stunning to me that you know, they would come in and sort of even give any fodder to this idea that this mayor would come in and cut library funding. But you know, they've addressed that. But you know, a couple other things that were interesting in there is, and relates to the Office of Community Safety, you know, tangentially is this big increase in budget to the Office of Hate Crime Prevention. That got a lot of compliments even from some Mamdani critics because of people who are concerned about the rise in anti Semitic hate crimes. So seeing that, you know, Mamdani is following through and some of his promise to increase funding for that office, you know, different things like further investment, they're touting in the trash containerization program, support for street vendors, you know, things that they've clearly prioritized in the first months of this administration. Also interesting to just sort of, you know, see noted in there what gets a bullet, what doesn't in the press release. So there's still this underlying issue though, Nick, of the city's sort of general fiscal health. Right. So you get these comments from Comptroller Levine, from the Citizens Budget Commission, some other governmental and non governmental watchdogs who are still concerned here. There's big out year gaps. Where are we? Where's this heading? What's, what do you Sort of make of that issue that, you know, Controller Levine is out here saying, okay, you know, this mostly is okay for now, but we've still got some big stuff to wrestle with here because the city is basically still spending more money than it's taking in.
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C
Yeah, I think went somewhat unremarked in the, in the budget release that the out year gaps have actually grown a little bit compared to the preliminary which Mark Levine highlighted. But I think the mayor pretty unusually, I don't believe he even acknowledged the gaps during his presentation. Yeah, I mean there's sort of an irony in this that the mayor was proclaiming throughout this whole process that he was the one interested in real fiscal responsibility because he wanted recurring revenues. Whereas himself up as an adversary, for example, in the council, he was arguing that priorities she was pushing were more one time sort of cost shifts. And yet in the end this deal came together in part through things that were closer to one time cost shifts than recurring revenues, at least in some areas. Stuff like the Pied a terre tax is recurring as well as some of these other changes from Albany. But it does seem quite possible that we're going to be back here in a year and having a very similar conversation. I'm certainly wondering whether once the governor's not in a re election stance, the tax the rich debate could look pretty different in Albany, especially as the federal cuts begin to have more of an effect on New York. I think forgetting which progressive group, but one of the many that are calling for tax makes put out some sort of a statement in the last 24 hours that alluded to the 2027 as being another big battleground.
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So yeah, Annie, that, I mean that debate clearly is not going anywhere. What do you make of how Mamdani is approaching getting this Pieta terror tax? Talking about, you know, touting that it's a quote unquote win for his agenda of taxing the rich. And this idea that the bigger battle around those tax increases is clearly put off to another day. And he's, he's not going to drop the issue. His supporters are not going to drop the issue. And I think it goes also back to this idea of pointing out that most of the new spending being accounted for here was not Mamdani administration priorities. Although obviously in order to fund it, you mostly have to agree with it. Otherwise he could be, you know, cutting some of it back. But he agrees with the city FEP's, you know, expansion, even if he wants to slow down the growth. So he's funding that. But it's not like new Mamdani priorities. So again, setting the stage for the further battles. So what do you make of how he's approaching the Pied a terror tax quote unquote win and sort of putting off the rest of the tax the rich battles for another day.
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He is, I think, sort of threading, diplomatically threading a needle where he's claiming the Pied a terror tax as a win for taxing the rich. And him and his administration are saying kind of we did tax the rich with this 500 million dollar a year revenue raiser. This is obviously targeting very wealthy people who own homes of worth more than $5 million. I believe that's the current makeup though not still in flux, but that is targeting the very wealthy. But I think he's understandably and predictably playing down the major losses of not getting those two tax hikes that he campaigned on and you know, threatened a property tax hike over if the, if the governor didn't pursue that didn't happen in the state budget. And I think he is sort of saying not, not closing the door obviously on pursuing that in the future, which I think I believe he would. Some of his supporters, however, like the DSA or some of the progressive groups are being a bit more open in their responses to this, saying, yes, we tax the rich with the Pied a terror tax, but it's on Hochul to do a lot more now to actually implement these much larger taxes, the income hike and the corporate tax hike. So they're being a bit more critical of the state and their response. But Mamdani is understandably being a bit more diplomatic.
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B
Well, two things are also to bring into this. One is he quickly got a win on expanded child care funding from the governor. Right. But that's not forever. You know, the governor touted, and I think, you know, rightly so, that she was ensuring sort of two years of funding for the expansion that they agreed to and getting the 2k getting that going. But there's going to be, you know, again going back to what Mamdani campaigned on, there's going to be calls for more funding to keep expanding childcare and build that out. And then he basically barely talked about the free buses this year so far, you know, this budget cycle. So that seems like, you know, the governor was saying, well, I don't agree with taxing, you know, for the sake of taxing. And Mamdani didn't even really push back on that. He didn't say, well, I want to raise taxes to fund my free buses. You Know, he's sort of playing it a little bit safe there, but that conversation seems like it'll be at the forefront in that push. But it's. It's always a little bit remarkable to me how much at times the conversation of, like, increasing those taxes is actually divorced from, well, what do you want to spend that money on? Right. Like, sometimes it's just like. And again, you can have that as a value, that there should be a more progressive tax system. But. But sometimes it's, like, left out, like, to answer the question of what that money is going to go for.
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A
Well, also this year, I mean, and I think a lot of years, you're going to have these gaps, and I think, you know, shifted from being a campaign proposal of this will fund my priorities to we need this tax to fill the budget deficit. And so I think, you know, when it comes down to it, you have to pitch that. That that tax for whatever is the most urgent need. And I think, you know, the free buses just didn't seem like a reality this time around, and that's why we. It's been kind of silent on that.
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B
Yeah. And again, it is interesting to. Well, I was just gonna say, again, I don't think that, again, this was something that was feasible to come in and make happen within four or five months. Right. I mean, this is a bit. Doing a free bus system in New York city and finding 800, $900 million a year to fund it is a big undertaking. And especially when you get skepticism from the governor and the MTA chair, Jan O. Lieber, and lots of real questions about whether that's a smart way to spend 800, $900 million a year. You know, that's a heavy lift. Nick, you were saying?
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C
Sorry, I was, yeah. It's just to play pundit. It's. It's interesting to think about next year or the year after, if the mayor does make a big tax, the rich push again, how he'll frame it rhetorically. It'll be a lot harder for him to say we needed to bail out the city, given that he will have now been in charge of the city for at least a year and can no longer blame his predecessor in the same way. So maybe he'll sort of pivot back to saying, now it's time to implement my full agenda that I campaigned on and that's why we need to do it.
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B
But arguably, that certainly seems like where things are heading. I mean, it's interesting, though, we're in this moment where, you know, the governor wants the city to tighten up. But she's not, you know, a fiscal hawk by any means. So, you know, there's not a like she wanted the city to get its house in order more. And she was, you know, at times showing a little bit of annoyance by how much Mamdani and the city were asking for more and more state funds and tax increases and different things. But, you know, you also have a city council that doesn't really want to do that much belt tightening. They want to show efficiencies and savings where it doesn't hurt services. But like, I think it's going to be very interesting to see where the conversation goes in the City Council and the Mamdani administration around identifying more outdated programs, unnecessary spending, you know, things that are just sort of relics of administrations past that didn't really go anywhere. But, you know, there's still personnel and budget dedicated to it that could be repurposed for new things or, you know, there's a lot of bloat in city government while also being a lot of need in certain places where they're understaffed or underfunded. Like, you know, we're seeing more and more calls for additional help at the Department of Housing Preservation and Development or at the Department of Transportation to places where like Mamdani's really trying to get things going. So that'll be really interesting. I know City Council Speaker Julie Menon wants to tighten things up a lot on outside contracting. Mamdani seems to be wanting to do the same thing as we, you know, got at here, even in this conversation a little bit earlier about ways they're already trying to find some savings. So those will be some really interesting questions to me about how the city manages some of its own municipal funds, while Mamdani very likely goes and continues to push for additional billions of dollars of either money through the state or permission from the state to raise it locally. On where this is going with the City council, is it going to be smooth sailing right now from we're talking here on May 13 to a budget deal sometime in June? Annie, what's your read on where are there going to be any pressure points that we can tell right now? I mean, we've got a whole bunch of City Council hearings on the executive budget to come, so this will become evident soon. But what's your sense of where there might still be tension and negotiation?
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A
Yeah, it does seem like suspiciously calm at the moment, so I wouldn't count on it staying that way. But you never know, I guess.
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B
I think speaker sort of said like the Mayor followed our lead.
- [32:51]
A
They're kind of claiming wins for things in their budget response that the mayor has taken her up on. But I think the fairfairs funding is one element and that is one that I would be surprised. It doesn't, it doesn't end up in some way in, in the adoptive budget. I think it's something that is, you know, despite him not being in favor of means tested programs, I think I would assume it's something that the City hall will go along with towards the end of, of June, the city FEP's disagreement about expanding that, that program. I think, I don't know if that will play out in the budget as a sticking point, but I think that is a point of real where the council and the mayor are at opposite ends of whether it should be expanded or not. And I think that could play out. But yeah, I think the executive budget hearings will shed some more light on, on what might be the last items the council is either trying to get in there or additional things maybe they proposed in the, in the budget response that haven't been taken up yet. But it certainly seemed a little bit calmer than things were between the Adams and Adams regimes back in the last
- [34:03]
B
administration or even where things really got a little fiery around the preliminary budget and then the City Council's preliminary budget response where Mamdani, you know, put out his video calling out Speaker Menon and things really flared up there for a time. They seem to have at least somewhat patched things up here. Any thoughts on that, Nick? Anything you foresee? I'll just add, you know, I think, I think there'll be some really interesting conversations coming in the executive budget hearings and the broader negotiations before an adopted budget around the Department of Education. I think, you know, this idea of again, there might be broader agreement on some of the tenants here, but like, you know, shifting some of how special education cases are handled, questions about implementing the class size law and hiring new teachers and space that's needed at schools. You know, council members get very, very concerned about any school allocation issues in their districts. You know, and again, there's also some big questions about, you know, the city spending money on schools where enrollment has really shrunk. Controller Le you know, was, was saying on this show, you know, repeatedly that the city needs to look at combining some of those small, smaller schools. And you know, those are tough conversations, but they need to do that. That's very challenging for an administration to do so. I think the doe and again, that's the biggest part of the budget anyway. You know, and all the contracting there, you know, that's going to be some interesting conversations to come still. Nick, any thoughts?
- [35:33]
C
I would just mention one interesting moment in the budget presentations yesterday was Sharif Solomon, the mayor's budget director. At one point, I think he was asked about this change to the unincorporated business tax credit, which is one of the new sort of surprise revenue raisers that made it into this new budget. It's, I think, 68 million a year, so it's nothing enormous. But he was asked about it and he said basically like, yeah, we got that idea from the city council in their budget response. He sort of freely admitted that that's where it came from. So, I mean, that does seem to be evidence of a somewhat collaborative environment, that they're taking ideas from each other.
- [36:09]
B
And as the council holds these hearings, you know, there will be examination a lot of department by department on the vacancies, the personnel levels, efficiency and effectiveness and sort of making. You know, I think the council will be very concerned. But again, the mayor. Mayor side will likely agree that agencies have enough budgeted headcount and then also will be able to higher up and not lose, you know, through attrition and so forth. You know, so many employees that it's. They're not, you know, actually adding to the personnel that they need to do the work. You know, that'll be. That'll be interesting as well. Anything else, Nick, that you're watching for as the state budget gets finalized? Is there anything else that the city is especially sort of dependent on here or Mamdani has prioritized or not prioritized that, you know, be particularly interesting to see where they land or what the details are. For me, sticking with education, I know mayoral control of city schools is on that list. For me, not as much of a fiscal impact, but the question of do they just get an extension done in the budget and how many years it looks like they will. At the end of her sort of budget deal announcement that the governor made that the assembly speaker did not take kindly to. You know, the governor was sort of asked on her way out the room what's happening with mayoral control, and she said, I think we have two years in there, so. So that's not final, but we'll see on that. Anything else, Nick, that you're watching for in that final deal?
- [37:41]
C
Yeah, well, I think the structure of the pied a terra tax maybe most of all is the one that seems most unresolved. How they determine value of a $5 million home, where it applies, what the rates are. Those are pretty gigantic questions. The secret changes to environmental review law in order to build more housing. That has been one of the Maidani administration's biggest policy priorities this session. And I mean, the governor outlined what seems like a deal in her address. But from talking to advocates, it seems like language has not circulated yet, which would seem to suggest that things are still being worked out to some degree. So how that language actually looks, especially when it comes to New York City, since it seems like there will be somewhat different standards for New York than the rest of the state, that could have a huge impact on the pace of housing development in the city.
- [38:35]
B
Yeah. Annie, anything else on the state budget?
- [38:39]
A
I'd be curious. I don't think he has responded a whole lot to the conversation around weakening the clcpa. And I'm curious if, when we get sort of final language and what that looks like, if he has a critical response at all, because the governor certainly faced a lot of criticism for. For talking about pushing that back. I don't know the latest one sort of where that stands now, but sounds like some version of changes that will be a part of the budget. And I don't think we've heard anything really illuminating from the mayor on that.
- [39:17]
B
Right. I think he's. My guess is he'll stick with the tack that he's already gone on that, which is he doesn't talk about it. If he's asked, he'll say, I don't really want to see the climate act, you know, watered down or delayed. But my guess is he's going to steer clear of any sort of proactive criticism of the governor on that one or the state on that one. But we'll see. All right, as we wrap up here, zoom out again. Big picture here. Where's the mayor at on his big campaign promises? What's coming next? You know, even separate from the budget, we've obviously got the rent freeze conversation. Nick, I know this is something you've watched closely in the past, whether it's that or anything else. Any other big picture thoughts on sort of where the mayor's at here? We're now, you know, now he's really settling in. We're well past 100 days. We're getting through the executive budget here. What else is, you know, what else are you watching for moving forward in terms of his delivery on promises or his performance or how he's sort of managing things in the city?
- [40:17]
C
Yeah, rent freeze is probably the biggest, one of the biggest ones and probably the chance he has to most concretely you know, fully deliver on a campaign promise. Not. Not like the tax the rich stuff where he sort of got a fraction of what he wanted. You know, he probably can get the real rent freeze. So that'll be interesting to see. I'm certainly looking forward to the release of the housing plan, which is coming sometime in the next few weeks. Maybe unclear whether they'll identify particular neighborhoods that he wants to rezone or if it'll be more sort of conceptual, if they'll even set a unit count or. Or again, just have something more kind of broad. But that'll be super interesting to see how he sort of marries the abundance language with the sort of more tenant
- [41:00]
B
protection side of his philosophy and tying those together. I'm really interested to watch how the administration tries to navigate this idea that they want to rent freeze across all rent stabilized apartments, but they acknowledge that in many, mostly or all rent stabilized buildings, there are huge challenges with those buildings keeping up with maintenance and necessary, you know, upgrades and so forth. And how they navigate that, trying to see through the rent freeze. But then also, you know, what are the ways in which the Mom Dani administration is really trying to ensure that, like we see with public housing, that a lot of this rent stabilized housing, especially the oldest buildings, especially in places like the Bronx, are not sort of crumbling around their residence and are not, you know, going into lots of bankruptcies and foreclosures and what to do about that, unless part of their strategy is to let them and then have the city and nonprofit partners, you know, swoop in. So we'll see what that looks like. Annie, anything else? Big picture here, Mayor's priorities, what you're watching moving forward.
- [42:11]
A
You know, he was playing soccer, I think, in the Bronx the other day. So I'm watching the World cup and that's coming up next month, I guess. And, you know, he appointed a World cup czar back in January, I think, trying to make this super expensive, exclusive event somewhat accessible to New Yorkers. And I'm curious to see if that. If that pans out and how much of a economic impact investment this sort of much hyped global phenomenon phenomenon has in the city. And I think it's one that the governor and he have been sort of jointly appearing on a couple of times in the last couple of months. And. And we'll see if it. If it pans out.
- [42:48]
B
Yeah. And speaking of, of two of those things, one, I'm very interested to see what the mayor and governor's relationship sort of looks like as things quiet down here a little the budget, the state budget gets done and the city budget gets done. And like, how do they then, with a little more breathing room, navigate each other? And she's obviously got to ramp up then for the general election in November, how much is she leaning into his support to bring out his voters in the city versus keeping him at arm's length to not, you know, risk how maybe some people in the suburbs might feel about him? So I think that's going to be super interesting. And then on the World Cup, I haven't dug in on this, but it seems like there's reports in New York City and beyond that there's a lot less activity around this, likely having to do with the Trump administration's policies. People maybe a little less enthusiastic about traveling from abroad to the United States given they don't know if they can get back out or what might happen to them. So that could be a real problem for the city if some of that tax revenue doesn't materialize and this doesn't go the way people are expecting. As you mentioned there any lots of excitement about this, but we'll see. We'll leave it there. Nick Garber, Annie McDonough, thank you very much for the time. And maybe, maybe, maybe these last six weeks or so of the city budget process will be a little less eventful than we're, than we've seen in the past. We'll see. But thank you all. Thank you for the time. Appreciate it.
- [44:20]
A
Thanks, Ben.