He’s the Zo’ who cried wolf.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani “miraculously” found billions of dollars in under two weeks since he declared a doomsday budget scenario — leaving city insiders blasting the reckless math being used to justify the democratic socialist’s push to raise taxes.
The wannabe spendthrift mayor confessed Wednesday while testifying before the New York State Legislature that the looming budget gap for this and next fiscal year had been reduced from a doomsday projection of $12 billion to $7 billion in less than two weeks.
“What we have seen in the time since that press conference is not only the incorporation of the increased economic forecast, as well as Wall Street bonuses, but also an aggressive savings plan, as well as the use of your reserves,” Hizzoner touted after his more than five-hour Tin Cup Day testimony.
But insiders were left scratching their heads when his budget director, Sherif Soliman, divulged how much the massive pots of money meant in added revenue for city coffers.
For the current year, Soliman said the revenue was underestimated by $2.4 billion, which would more than close the gap of $2.2 billion.
The respected budget wiz added that next year’s revenue would come in a whopping $4.8 billion higher than previously released.
The billions more in revenue is exactly what Gov. Kathy Hochul and other city insiders knew was coming this month since the books had not been fully calculated when Hizzoner held a news conference sounding the alarm on the budget gap.
The governor and others were left peeved at Mamdani’s continued push to raise income taxes by 2% for people making $1 million even as the budget picture didn’t appear as bad as he initially claimed.
“I can’t believe they tried to pull this and expect anyone to believe the situation miraculously corrected itself in two weeks,” one politco rage. “Nobody’s buying it.”
Another admitted the city’s budget gap is “real” but “this math is not.”
“Unfortunately, for someone who came in promising to govern so differently, he’s proving by month two in office to be playing the same games and using the same antics as his predecessors.”
But the fuzzy math didn’t stop there.
Even with the tally of $7.2 billion in added tax money, only $3 billion was being used to close the budget gap, with Mamdani saying the admin would pull from reserves and the short-term savings account to help with the deficit.
That leaves $4.2 billion in the new revenue unaccounted for — at least until next Feb. 17 when Mam’s balanced executive budget is due.
“I just don’t understand how this adds up to needing new taxes,” another insider said, adding, “Unless you spend billions more on pet projects.”
Former Mayor Eric Adams, who was accused of cooking the revenue books on more than one occasion, even jumped on the bandwagon to attack his successor.
“Four weeks later and Mayor Mamdani suddenly ‘finds’ $5 billion,” he shared on social media. “Give him another month, maybe the other $7 billion appears too.”
A City Hall rep did not respond to questions about how the budget math added up.
Andrew Rein, the president of the Citizens Budget Commission watchdog group, said New Yorkers will likely just have to wait till next week for answers.
“We need to see the numbers on Tuesday.”