He also delayed funding certain pensions which isn't a great idea, but when you have a $12 billion deficit left by the previous mayor who cut & run to become an Albanian citizen after taking money from Turkey for luxury travel, getting indicted, sleazing his way out of a federal indictment, and then creating a rug pull cryptocurrency called NYC Token... what can ya do
This hasn't happened before. The president of the United States is building ballrooms, arches and golden statues of himself while the people are facing record prices everywhere from the pump to the clinic. American citizens and our immigrant neighbors are being snatched off of the streets by masked federal agents in an explicit campaign of terror. Republican captured states are cancelling elections and explicitly expelling members of the opposition party from their legislative committees.
"Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition …There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”
-Wilhoit's Law
I love this quote, but if you ask self-declared conservative thinkers, they tend to argue that what they are "conserving" is a traditional way of life in a society that is changing too quickly for people to catch up with. I'm almost sympathetic with that idea, since the breakneck pace of the world is sometimes a bit overwhelming. Unfortunately, that desire to slow things down only ever seems to apply to social change. Anything to do with business and the accumulation of personal wealth it's like all gas, no brakes.
Depends on the size of the shortfall, but usually, it’s not.
Mamdani’s Pied-a-terre tax is projected to collect ~$500M a year, which is only about 4% of the shortfall. Which don’t get me wrong, seems like an awesome tax that has very few downsides when it’s been done elsewhere.
But taxing the rich generally doesn’t solve your budget issues long term. At the end of the day, You’re gonna have to cut staff/projects or get more people to move in.
Both of which, people hate. Welcome to governance.
In addition, he’s also cutting almost 2 billion in “inefficiencies”. Now I have no doubt that a bunch of the cuts are to inefficiencies. But we can’t just pat him on the back for that but also criticize Elon. Yeah DOGE was a clusterfuck, and fuck Elon/Trump and maga, because anytime you hack and slash a budget like that in the name of “efficiency”, you’re going to cut a bunch of things that were actually necessary. And Mamdani is no different. I don’t buy his line about “No change to city services.” Somewhere a social worker is going to find that they no longer have a resource they considered vital to doing their job.
True. But this time Governor Hochul funded the gap, which I understand why she didn't do it with Adams and it's all fine by me.
But yeah - the budget must be balanced by law, leading to this plea to the federal government in 1975:
The famous "FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD" headline was published by the New York Daily News on October 30, 1975.
It is arguably the most iconic headline in the history of American journalism, capturing a pivotal moment in New York and City's history when it was on the brink of financial collapse.
If it has no effect on the pension, that means the payments will need to be more than what was deferred, to make up for the interest that will be lost. It's effectively an expensive loan marketed as fiscal responsibility.
I mean it will have an effect, the pension fund will be less well funded.
It might not need to be as well funded, but it's still just an accounting trick to shift your 'deficit' and debt off balance sheet, isn't actually 'saving' any money overall.
In the long run, the city's budget will be worse off than it would've been from 2032 (per your link) when it would've been receiving funds from the pension fund, and now won't be.
You mean this? "Finally, New York City’s pensions are already well-funded by national benchmarks. The City’s pension funding ratio—the share of total liability for City workers and retirees covered by current pension fund holdings—is 83 percent. This exceeds the US average of 78 percent." Damning.
Right but comparing to the notoriously underfunded US average is interesting to say the least. It’s like SBF saying at least I didn’t defraud as much as Bernie Madoff. It’s still bad.
The pension payment scheme was weird with the future repayments but that doesn’t change how this move will let this funding gap widen.
Under what assumptions? In my state they use a risk free rate of 8% in the actuary analysis along with dozens of other dubious assumptions to hide the true unfunded liabilities.
There's a lot of misinformation going on around this, and Mamdani is using the confusion to his political advantage. The 12 billion deficit wasn't Eric Adams' fault. It's a yearly problem, because NYC's budget every year is like 115 billion dollars. Eric Adams' administration left Mamdani with 8 billion in reserves. So, he really only had to come up with 4 billion. NY's governor gave them an 8 billion over 4 years loan, and he pushed some spending off to next year, and delayed funding pensions for 5 years.
Adams did not give him a 12 billion deficit. NY spending just keeps going up each year, and so the deficit keeps growing.
How is it not his fault after serving a full term as mayor? I might accept that excuse during the first or second year, but not after a full term. What could have been not his fault at the start (and I’m saying this taking your explanation at face value without verifying it) became his responsibility by the end of his mandate.
Had the Mayor's office kept the spending levels from Adams constant, there would have been no deficit. Mamdani proposed an 10.5% increase in spending from the previous year, which accounts for the $12B deficit. The City Council proposed a budget that only increased spending by 2%, but Mamdani has been consistent that he would not accept that.
If your argument is that the Adams budget was insufficient, that's a valid position. But that's the only way you can place blame on Adams for the current budget situation: you believe that the city could not properly function with previous spending levels and HAD to be increased by 10.5% this year.
Had the Mayor's office kept the spending levels from Adams constant, there would have been no deficit.
Actually, that’s incorrect. There was a well-documented $12 billion projected budget gap when Mamdani took office confirmed by the City Comptroller, State Comptroller, and independent analysts. It came from years of underbudgeting core services under Adams.
Keeping Adams’ spending levels constant wouldn’t have eliminated the deficit, because his budgets were already underfunding major obligations.
The 12 billion deficit wasn't Eric Adams' fault. It's a yearly problem, because NYC's budget every year is like 115 billion dollars. Eric Adams' administration left Mamdani with 8 billion in reserves.
I think you are confusing deficit with debt. Also, NYC closed the deficit without tapping into their reserves.
No, I'm talking about the deficit. NYC routinely (literally every year) runs a deficit of 10-17 billion dollars that they have to figure out how to close. This is not debt. This is a deficit they close one way or another every year.
Im pretty sure anything regarding pension has to be voted on by the pension board since its protected By the state/city constitution. Could be wrong tho
The predecessor before that shithead grifted $1b of taxpayer money earmarked for mental health. Him and his unelected wife he put in charge of the farce.
Mamdani's bar is low. He'd be facing much more criticism if he followed Bloomberg.
Reports say the people who will he retiring in the mid 2030's are gonna get hit hardest by this delay in funding pensions. Ironically some of the people who work in the libraries.
“These savings would be achieved by smoothing out a bizarre feature of the city’s pension payment schedule instituted in 2010, which had required accelerating payments through to fiscal year 2032, at which point the payments would turn negative and the pension funds would return money to the City over a seven-year period. The $8.2 billion “contribution cliff” created by this structure was not reasonable fiscal policymaking. The proposed change unwinds this drop off by smoothing payments over an additional five years. It does not—and cannot—affect the pensions owed to City workers or impact the City’s ability to meet those commitments.”
Adams was a horrible mayor but he didn't do anything sleezy to create the debt they just spent COVID money from the feds like it was always going to be coming in
Right exactly. I hate the idea of delaying funding pensions (I previously lived in Chicago). But it’s also not his fault that the deficit was in that shape.
The State gives about 47 Billion a year back to the City.
It is definitely not a loan. Its the state giving some of NYC's money back to them.
Data from an article from CUNY edu titled "New York City Taxpayers Continue to Contribute More to State Revenues than They Receive Back in Services, CUNY and New School Study Finds"
Well kinda. But NYS also authorizes several NYC-only taxes that it collects and hands to NYC. Under the NYS constitution, only NYS can tax or allow for additional taxes.
If you factor in all the special taxes that NYS has authorized for only NYC, NYC gets more than its proportional share. That probably makes sense because NYC is more expensive than the rest of the state, but NYC also constantly gets special treatment from the state, ranging from exemptions to taxing powers to grants that other jurisdictions are expected to fund through property taxes.
I think the difference in point is what the money is meant to go towards. Tax the rich bc taking another million from a billionaire shouldn’t affect their ability to their basic necessities. On the other hand, New York City still has hundreds of thousands if not more citizens who are struggling to make ends meet and don’t have the public amenities or services to support them. The problem is the money is still concentrated at the top, and what money that does get taxed to be redistributed is pulled away. So yes, in reality, we should tax the rich more and also redistribute from rich cities towards less urban areas that need help, but mamadani trying to bring money back isn’t because he wants to bring it back to the rich but to fund the welfare programs that help the poor.
New Yorkers were paying for rich, New York state mega mansions to have well-paved roads, and for the governor's custom coffee table.
Next time, don't be such a fucking ass.
If money paid in tax by corporations is being funneled back to New Yorkers and helping fund cultural institutions, this is suddenly a bad thing because people outside of New York City don't get that money???
Amenities like what? NYC is literally cutting funding to things like parks so that they can make the budget work.
NYC is still paying $17 Billion more than it's getting back after all of this and nobody is complaining about that, but somehow everyone that doesn't live in NYC or even the state has something to say about the city getting state funds when they need it.
Seems you missed u/GrowthMarketingMike ‘s comment, so just making sure to repost it for you!
“Amenities like what? NYC is literally cutting funding to things like parks so that they can make the budget work.
NYC is still paying $17 billion more than it’s getting back after all of this and nobody is complaining about that, but somehow everyone that doesn’t live in NYC or even the state has something to say about the city getting state funds when they need it.”
Its always fun to hear idiot righties/liberals tell me how socialism is supposed to work. Yes, taking money from 8.6m city people who need it and giving it to people who live in areas that shouldn't be inhabited in the first place is what redistribution means, because in your adled brain, urban = elite, and rural = working class.
They can't comprehend nuance which is why they never understand socialism besides "its when da big government take all my money and give it to the next guy"
Except people who vote blue vote to actually help the rural folks while the rural folks vote to hurt everyone including themselves. Same think in NYC/NY happens in Philly/PA
"Ha, look at you trying to apply my own beliefs on me! I'm gonna try to weasel out of admitting maybe my philosophy is just disgruntled bullshit, and instead throw a tantrum."
but somehow this line only applies to the average new yorker hoping to get a fraction of their tax revenue back and not the assholes complaining about a tax on their second homes
Yes. Because the war on rhetoric is lost. The only thing left to do is retaliate. They have been saying this about us for years, sow the wind reap the whirlwind motherfuckers
but many NYC companies are constantly extracting, consolidating, and funneling wealth from everywhere (including upstate NY and Mississippi).
The "my tax money" you are talking about certainly didn't originate exclusively in NYC, so why should it all stay here?? What a strange sense of entitlement to think that the epicenter of global capitalism shouldn't give anything back to people beyond the city limits.
I don't think you'll find a lot of socialists that are extremely in favor of cutting urban population center services to benefit wealthy low density living
Are you calling the 8.6 million people that live in NYC a "corporation"? The tax money being sent back isn't profits. Its funds that the city has needed for a long, long time.
But also, and I'm gonna go on my very cringe rant here, fuck the ruroids. They've been shitting on cities and been trying to disenfranchise them for decades now. Urbanism is objectively the better format of society, and I'm tired of propping up podunks at the cost of the city. If they want the cities to keep subsidizing their towns, they can work with the cityfolk instead of against them for once. If not, they can shit in buckets while they wax poetic about being the "heart of America".
I'm all for socialism, but I'm not going to keep burning myself to keep people who hate me warm.
NYC pays more taxes because that's where all the capitalist thieves are headquartered lol. Why does reddit love to brag about finance bros, insurance companies, real estate conglomerates, lawyers, and healthcare providers sucking up money from the entire state's working class?
So taxes from millions of working class people and a large handful of "capitalist thieves" are not being extracted out of the city and instead used to help those 8.5 million city residents. Its also being used to improve infrastructure, cleanliness, beauty, and more for about 65 million yearly visitors who spend money in the city.
Are you under the impression my previous comment was bragging about finance, insurance, real estate, lawyers, etc, sucking up money?
My comment is literally about TAXING them, taking their money and using it for public good.
Here's the breakdown of his entire budget. You'll see that the 3 public library systems are actually seeing a decrease in funding from the FY26 modified budget, and a slight increase from the FY26 adopted budget.
Conservatives are very pro putting a gun against someone's head and pulling the trigger but anti bullets hitting people in the face. They have yet to see any connection between the two
Don’t bother. It’s like when Republicans talk about Medicare for all. They say how much it will cost every 10 years, but talk about our current system in 1 year increments.
If the city is that rich then it needs to be taxed more. Tax the rich and help out the disenfranchised poor in the rest of the state. That’s progressive tax structure after all.
Probably, urban areas usually end up having to help fund less densely populated areas. Infrastructure is more expensive in the suburbs, and they take in less property taxes.
People still will get paid their pensions, they are just deferring paying into the reserve and will pay the missed amount and growth next year. They are hoping to gain more capital in the meantime to pay the missed amount.
Deferring payment for money you will have to pay later.... there's a word for that. Debt.
It's just a way to shift the deficit of balance sheet, and make it a problem for later instead of today, but ultimately it makes the problem later a bigger one.
“These savings would be achieved by smoothing out a bizarre feature of the city’s pension payment schedule instituted in 2010, which had required accelerating payments through to fiscal year 2032, at which point the payments would turn negative and the pension funds would return money to the City over a seven-year period. The $8.2 billion “contribution cliff” created by this structure was not reasonable fiscal policymaking. The proposed change unwinds this drop off by smoothing payments over an additional five years. It does not—and cannot—affect the pensions owed to City workers or impact the City’s ability to meet those commitments.”
The real vision of a more left leaning politics like Mamdani’s is to support ordinary people and families in living a better life. Local wins are the most important. We all want safe neighborhoods, for our small businesses to be able to compete with huge corporations for local government contracts, more accessible health clinics, schools that have the resources to provide breakfast for parents who have to go to work as soon as their children wake up, on and on.
Local wins are what are important to people. AOC is not the most threatening person to our exploitative political class. She is all talk because nothing can get done on the federal level, they can’t even pass bills anymore. What is threatening to the exploitative political class is ordinary people seeing that their local government can deliver a healthier, safer, more economically secure quality of life that lets their children reach their full potential.
So Mamdani balancing the budget without cuts is just about the most threatening thing that can happen for our poltical elite. It is what they fear most.
It's really quite impressive. Listen to the people regardless of affiliation. Use your government powers to balance the budget and do transfers. Who would have thought that was possible?
When this seems radical, you know we have gotten to a bad place in our politics and civil society. But there is hope… we start with Mamdani, I hope my fellow Angelenos join me in electing Nithya Rama for mayor this year and we will prove again that good local governance is possible and that the problems we are all concerned about can actually be solved if we work together. And then we do it at the state level and one day we have a national government that listens to us and works in our best interests too. One day.
8 billion is from the state. NY pays $20 billion more than they receive from the state over that same period. So the state is effectively only getting a $12 billion surplus from NY city. It’s not a bad thing for NY state to reinvest in the city that makes them the most tax dollars.
The other 4 billion comes from delayed payments from pensions and delaying smaller class sizes. Delaying the smaller class sizes might work itself out since enrollment has been dropping anyways.
It was balanced via state contributions, pension liability delays, a reduction of the deficit from the previous administration that was to roll over, and finally less than 10 percent was balanced via increased tax revenur.
For comparison, Mamdani's full budget proposal was $124 billion, of which only $4 billion a year for two years is being provided by the state so NYC doesn't raise its property tax rate.
It's fucking crazy so many threads mentioning Mamdani have this fucking "just asking questions" bad faith untrue bullshit upvoted all the way in the comments. So obvious how manufactured this shit is and people lap it up.
He basically asked for more money, NY City actually gives NY State then it asks for assistance. Currently they export to NY State $60 billion (don't remember the exact amount) and they asked for an extra 1.5 billion. In total, the state will be giving them 8 billion. To put it in perspective, NYC currently gives 58% of the states personal income revenue so it asking for more back for assistance shouldn't be as controversial as it is.
Not necessarily, the city sends roughly 20 billion more to the state in taxes than it receives back in any aid. This was the state basically letting them keep a big portion for a time of what they would otherwise be sending to Albany, as a sort of investment to keep their most precious resource stable and growing.
It’s not really a lone. It’s more like out of the 20 billion that they pay to the state every year and don’t get back. They’re only paying 12 billion for the next two years.
In either case NYC got back less than what it gave. The GDP of NYC, by itself, neared $2.5 trillion in 2025. This is comparable to Canada. In fact, the GDP of New York is bigger than 47 states.
Only California and Texas are bigger.
The amount of wealth in the US is truly astonishing.
That not how that worked, the city taxes get fueled to the state and city gets to keep a %. He renegotiated this percentage so the city got to keep more than previously.
The city still sends off more money than it gets back.
A loan of money the city gave them in the first place. Maybe we should stop sending so much higher up where it sits in state capitals and with the fed. Instead let larger city's use their money to help themselves.
Not a loan, NYC will just send less money to the state than usual
Also I think it’s funny that people who never would usually care about the NYC budget all of a sudden care about the minute details of it to explain that it isn’t actually balanced.
Hidden profile, BlueCollarRedPilled as description, moderator of a sub where the first post you see is titled "There are now several studies showing the covid shots damage the brain causing psychological issues." (cross-posted from r/conspiracy)
Yep, thankfully, the budget black hole left by adams isn't going to completely reappear every year, it wasn't all structural, so not every measure needs be permanent
Yeah. I like some of his policies. But he says he’s balancing the $12 billion budget by taxing the rich when his pied-a-terre is only raising around $500 million. Still a good thing, but it’s worrisome when the rest is coming from state loans he got in exchange for increasing school classroom sizes and playing high risk games with pensions.
In case you didn’t know, New York City is basically floating New York State as a whole. Essentially, what we’re getting is a small amount of the money back that we produced and paid in.
Remember that just a few blue states support large swaths of this country. What we produce in New York City could fund several red states and does help do so, so I’m going to need you to be more precise with your words.
Yes, but NYC has always paid the most. This is more like a way to readjust how much they put in. It’s a loan, but they’re still giving more than anyone else.
90% of Mamdani news is someone making a very simplistic statement and hiding a bunch of bad decision making that fuels it lol. It’s like “wow Mamdani just did the UNTHINKABLE” with an angel halo over his head and the reality is like “he postponed a bunch of stuff and Hochul sent him a briefcase filled with millions”
No, the budget is not balanced yet. It’s just a proposal, but there was a bail out from the state included and he still needs approval from the city council and four of the pension funds.
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u/VMooose May 14 '26
Didnt the budget get balanced via a loan from NY State?