US News Metro Long Island Politics

Sports NFL MLB Olympics NBA NHL College Football College Basketball WNBA

Business Personal Finance

Entertainment TV Movies Music Celebrities Awards Theater

Lifestyle Weird But True Sex & Relationships Viral Trends Human Interest Parenting Fashion & Beauty Food & Drink Travel

Health Wellness Fitness Health Care Medicine Men’s Health Women’s Health Mental Health Nutrition

Science Space Environment Wildlife Archaeology

Today’s Paper Covers Columnists Horoscopes Crosswords & Games Sports Odds Podcasts Careers

Email Newsletters Official Store Home Delivery Tips

Switch between CA and NY editions here.

The not-so-hidden agenda behind Mamdani’s budget bumbling

Mayor Zohran Mamdani is making a show of cutting the budget, with videos of him looking for millions under sofa cushions.

He’s pretending he’s leaving no stone unturned to close a $5.4 billion budget gap.

Don’t buy it. These are token gestures meant to suggest the city has cut all it can, giving Albany cover to justify what he hopes comes next: Mamdani’s tax hikes on high earners and employers.

Sure, cutting low-value government spending deserves some credit, but the problem is that Mamdani’s savings are mostly speculative or trivial.

Even the largest cut so far, $100 million from removing ineligible health-care dependents, would only materialize if auditors find such dependents.

And even if he reaps all the $1.7 billion in savings that he’s seeking, it would still leave that $5.4 billion hole untouched.

Hey Mamdani: It turns out you DO need millionaires in NYC

‘Woke’ taxpayer-funded agency skips Mamdani’s order to find sweeping savings to close NYC budget gap

Mamdani’s schools chief tells some tough truths

In other words, his budget assumes those savings are real, even though they may never materialize, leaving not a $5.4 billion but a $7.1 billion gap.

Meanwhile, he’d be spending on things like a three-year, $1.86 billion, no-bid deal with the hotel industry to provide homeless shelters, including for migrants, who now have no time limit on their stay.

He somehow found another $260 million for a new “Mayor’s Office of Community........

© New York Post