It’s a poor Mam who blames his tools.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani served up plenty of finger-pointing, but few details Wednesday on his plans to plug the city’s massive upcoming $12 billion budget hole — other than again calling on Gov. Kathy Hochul to tax the rich.
A stern Mamdani gave a doom-and-gloom address from City Hall’s Blue Room that wasted no time blaming his predecessor Eric Adams and rival former Gov. Andrew Cuomo for the budget crunch threatening his expensive socialist agenda.
“New York City is facing a serious fiscal crisis,” Mamdani said, calling it a poison chalice handed to his fledgling administration by Adams.
“This is not just bad governance, it is negligence.”
The fresh-faced mayor still promised to deliver a balanced budget by Feb. 17, when the first preliminary spending plan of his administration is due.
But Mamdani repeatedly dodged questions as to how he’d pull off that feat, vaguely acknowledging he’ll need to find “efficiencies” and cut fat from the budget.
After being pressed three times, Mamdani finally coughed up a single example of wasteful spending that could be cut: Adams’ failed artificial intelligence chatbot.
The bot cost roughly $500,000, Mamdani said — or roughly 0.004% of the budget hole he faces.
Mamdani argued more forcefully that Albany lawmakers need to make sweeping changes such as raising taxes on the wealthiest New Yorkers and corporations — a push that could put him on a collision course with the governor, who has made her distaste for those hikes clear.
“We are encouraged by the relationship we are building not only with Gov. Hochul but other legislators in Albany,” he said.
Hochul, during a Manhattan event, said she didn’t watch Mamdani’s address.
A spokesperson for Hochul responded to Mamdani’s call to raise taxes by pointing to the governor’s stance in a recent FOX5 interview, where she left the door open for a hike — but just a crack.
“I don’t believe in raising taxes for the sake of raising taxes,” she said. “And what is served by that? We have high taxes already predating my time. We have enough revenues to do what we want to do and what we need to do to support our state. So beyond that, I don’t see a justification.”
As skimpy as Mamdani was on solutions, he was far more generous in diagnosing the problem as the “Adams budget crisis.”
He contended the former mayor systematically underbudgeted services such as rental assistance, shelters and special education, while quietly leaving enormous gaps for the future.
Mamdani notably didn’t mention that City Council members approved the budgets, or acknowledge that Adams’ budget guru Jacques Jiha was a mentee of Dean Fuleihan — the city’s current first deputy mayor, who stood by Mamdani’s side during the address.
After bashing Adams, Mamdani trained his fire on his mayoral election rival.
Cuomo extracted the Big Apple’s resources to cover state-level holes, while withholding funds from the city, Mamdani argued. He said this created a “stunning fiscal imbalance” in which New Yorkers contribute 54.5% of state revenue, but only receive 40.5% back.
“No part of this state gives more, but gets less in return,” he said.
The former mayor’s and governor’s camps wasted no time in returning fire in the blame game.
Rich Azzopardi, a spokesperson for former Gov. Cuomo, ripped the custom-made jacket Mamdani wore during the winter storm in a characteristically scathing response.
“Zohran Mamdani needs to learn that being an executive is more than cosplaying in a custom designer made windbreaker, you need a basic command of the facts: under Governor Cuomo, state aid to New York City schools rose 68 percent, and the state absorbed billions in New York City Medicaid cost increases,” Azzopardi said in a statement.
“He also hasn’t been governor for the last five years, the exact amount of time that Mamdani — as a state legislator — was in a position to correct any perceived inequalities. Except he couldn’t even be bothered to show up for work.”
Adams’ spokesman Todd Shapiro ran through a list of fiscal challenges the former mayor himself inherited.
“Mayor Eric Adams inherited a city facing nearly $10 billion in debt, compounded by the worst public-health and economic crisis in New York City history,” Shapiro said in a statement. “COVID devastated the economy, and the City was later forced to absorb billions in migrant-related costs that should not have fallen solely on local taxpayers.
“Despite these challenges, Mayor Adams led a real recovery through steady leadership and tough decisions. Blaming him for decades-old City–State funding inequities is inaccurate and disingenuous.”
— Additional reporting by Hannah Fierick
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