NEW YORK (BLOOMBERG) — Wall Street’s booming year will not be enough to stave off a financial crisis that Mayor Zohran Mamdani says is worse than the Great Recession more than a decade ago.
“Wall Street’s announcement is something that is very encouraging and frankly will be helpful in dealing with a $12 billion fiscal deficit,” Mamdani said in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s Balance of Power on Thursday. “The reason I cannot point to Wall Street and say the deficit will be taken care of is simply the sheer scale of this deficit. We are talking about something that is larger frankly than what the city even faced during the Great Recession.”
Over two years, New York City faces a projected $12.6 billion budget gap — deficits he blamed on his predecessor Eric Adams and former Governor Andrew Cuomo. Adams and Cuomo, who both ran against Mamdani in last year’s election, have denied those allegations.
In a bid to help fill those holes, Mamdani launched a campaign earlier this week to lobby lawmakers in Albany and Governor Kathy Hochul to hike taxes on the richest residents and corporations, asking the state to send billions more in aid to the city. Mamdani said fixing the issues requires an “all of the above approach.”
The state’s budget coffers are overflowing this year — New York garnered $17 billion more in tax revenue than it anticipated it would get a year ago — largely because of plentiful income tax receipts and Wall Street bonus revenue, as well as the performance of the stock market, which was buoyed by artificial intelligence companies.
The calls for higher taxes and more state aid set up a conflict with Hochul, who has repeatedly objected to raising levies. “We’re not raising taxes in the state of New York, I’m not raising taxes for the sake of raising taxes,” she said on Wednesday. She acknowledged that Mamdani has been pitching for the change in policy since his campaign and pledged to work closely with the mayor’s office through the budget process.
State budget officials said last week they were keeping some funds in reserve in the event of an economic downturn or further federal cuts, but Mamdani argued the state could simultaneously spare funds for the city and also save for the future.
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