Mayor Zohran Mamdani should end his calls for more taxes in the already heavily taxed Big Apple — and instead get the city’s longtime overspending under control, a fiscal watchdog warned.
The centrist Citizens Budget Commission called on the Democratic socialist new mayor to act — including by streamlining bureaucracy and eliminating staffing bloat — in order to put the city on a path to “fiscal sustainability.”
“New York City’s fiscal challenges are largely the result of excessive spending growth rather than insufficient revenues,” the group wrote in a letter to Mamdani on Friday.
“Agencies should be given appropriate ambitious targets, but savings should be prioritized to preserve critical services and not uniform across the board.”
The CBC also suggested that Mamdani tap into tech to offset personnel costs and reimagine programs or agency initiatives that haven’t proven effective to come up with a multi-year plan to get city finances back on track.
“We recognize that these choices are not easy,” the letter reads.
“Clear communication about priorities and tradeoffs will be critical, and we are confident in your ability to help New Yorkers understand how operational reforms can support affordability, protect core services, and strengthen trust in government.”
But the pathway to fiscal responsibility should not be put on the shoulders of taxpayers, forcing them to pony up more to the government, regardless of their income levels, the group said.
“New York already carries the highest overall tax burden in the nation, and while revenues remain strong, tax increases would weaken the City’s competitiveness.”
Mamdani has long called — along with his comrades in the DSA — for more taxes in the Empire State, with the young mayor making a push for a corporate tax increase as well as a 2% bump on personal income taxes for those making more than $1 million.
The mayor has been facing blowback from his alarmist press conference two weeks ago, when he declared the city was staring down a $12 billion shortfall over the next two years, but failed to account for billions of dollars of tax revenue.
Mamdani has since claimed the budget deficit sits at $7 billion, but his fuzzy math has annoyed even some in his own party, even his pal in Albany, Gov. Kathy Hochul.
The Mamdani administration will release its first draft of a balanced budget Tuesday, when the public will be able to see the real fiscal health of the city.
During the mayoral campaign, he repeatedly said the city could eliminate unneeded spending agency-by-agency, but he’s yet to identify any substantive cuts to come.
Even when Hizzoner prematurely sounded the alarm last month about the city’s multi-billion-dollar looming budget gap, he could only point to one Adams-era boondoggle, a deeply flawed AI chatbot, which cost around $500,000.