A day after New York Gov. Kathy Hochul repeated her message that New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin should cut spending to balance the city’s budget, Mamdani reiterated his call for state assistance, saying that cutting spending will not be enough to close the gap.
“There is no amount of savings that would absolve Albany of the need to partner with the city, given the scale of this crisis,” Mamdani said, speaking on April 29 in the New York City borough of the Bronx to announce an effort to get more New Yorkers to testify at the Rent Guidelines Board hearing.
When asked on April 28 whether she was still willing to help the city, Hochul responded that the state has already helped New York City.
“I think it’s crystal clear that we already have helped them,” Hochul said, speaking in Colonie, New York. She listed state assistance given to New York City: $1.2 billion to launch child care for 2-year-olds, $1.5 billion to help cover a budget shortfall, and $500 million in revenue via the pied-à-terre tax.
“We have encouraged the speaker and the mayor to do what every other city has to do: Look at your expenses.
“They have programs that are growing, not 4 percent a year, but 4 percent a month.”
New York City faces a $5.4 billion budget shortfall in 2026, largely from recurring expenses related to existing programs. One such program is the City Fighting Homelessness and Eviction Prevention Supplement, a housing voucher program for which costs have ballooned from $25 million in 2019 to $1.24 billion in 2025. In March, New York City Comptroller Mark Levine warned that the program is growing by 4 percent per month.
As for spending cuts, in January, Mamdani tasked every city agency with eliminating waste and finding savings to help close the deficit for fiscal years 2026 and 2027. On March 20, city agencies filed their reports, but the total only reaches $1.7 billion in savings, far short of the $5.4 billion budget gap.
On April 28, Menin and Mamdani joined forces to urge the state for more help. They encouraged the state to reduce the pass-through entity tax credit. The credit is used by business owners and partnerships to reduce their federal taxable income. However, the governor immediately rejected the idea, saying that she viewed a cut in the credit as equivalent to an income tax increase, which she has adamantly opposed.
When asked about city council proposals to raise revenue, such as increasing speeding enforcement and red-light cameras in the city, Mamdani said that he supports these options to raise revenue but that none of them would reach the scale needed to fill the shortfall the city is facing.
Mamdani said the problem is rooted in how budgeting was done under the previous administration.
“This was a deficit we inherited because of long-standing spending that was not being accounted for,” he said, noting that the solution needs to be on the same scale, “whether it be through additional revenue or through cost shifts to ensure that we have structural solutions to a structural problem.”
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