New York City (NYC) Mayor Zohran Mamdani cast blame on former NYC Mayor Eric Adams for the city’s $12 billion deficit budget, stating that the city is facing a “serious fiscal crisis.”
During a press conference on Wednesday, Mamdani accused Adams of underbudgeting important services that NYC residents “rely on every single day,” while “quietly leaving behind enormous gaps for the future.” Mamdani also accused former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) of extracting NYC’s “resources” and using the city’s revenues to “address state level holes, while withholding from the city what it was owed.”
“There is a massive fiscal deficit in our city’s budget to the tune of at least $12 billon. We did not arrive at this place by accident. This crisis has a name, and a chief architect,” Mamdani said. “In the words of The Jackson 5, it’s as easy as ABC. This is the ‘Adams Budget Crisis.’”
Mamdani went on to explain that under what Adams described as the “best budget ever,” Adams “handed the next administration a poisoned chalice.” Mamdani accused Adams of having “systematically under-budgeted services that New Yorkers rely on every single day.”
During the press conference, a reporter pointed out that Mamdani was “describing this sort of fundamental relationship reset” between the city and the state. The reporter added that “it would take more than just” two tax increases “to achieve that,” and questioned if Mamdani was “expecting to ask for” more “in terms of long-term.”
“We are speaking about a fiscal crisis at the scale greater than the Great Recession,” Mamdani answered. “And, so there will not be one single thing that can answer that crisis. It will require us to pursue every single avenue. That means looking inward into savings and efficiencies, that also means raising taxes on the wealthiest New Yorkers, and the most profitable corporations.”
During the press conference, Mamdani added that “if the top 1% of New Yorkers pay an additional 2% in income taxes,” they would not only be able to put NYC “back on firmer financial footing, but also build a strong city for everyone,” the Gothamist reported.
Mamdani will reportedly deliver a preliminary budget “on Feb. 17,” according to the outlet:
The preliminary budget — which Mamdani plans to deliver on Feb. 17 — will be a test of his ability to make difficult tradeoffs between popular line items like city parks or libraries and important, costly agencies like the NYPD and local schools.
In response to Mamdani’s press conference, Adams accused Mamdani of blaming him for the city’s budget deficit, because Mamdani “promised a laundry list of ‘free’ giveaways to buy votes, with no plan to pay for them.” Adams also claimed that he had left Mamdani “over $8 BILLION in reserves.”
“In case anyone was wondering, this was the real motive behind today’s press conference,” Adams wrote in a post on X. “Mayor Mamdani promised a laundry list of ‘free’ giveaways to buy votes, with no plan to pay for them. Now that the math doesn’t work, instead of owning the fact that he misled New Yorkers, he’s blaming me.”
“Let’s be clear,” Adams added. “I left him over $8 BILLION in reserves.”
