When New York Governor Kathy Hochul announced on Monday, the same day the New York City budget was unveiled, that she was providing $4 billion from the state to help close the city’s budget gap, the media was quick to frame it as if Mamdani and the city were spending irresponsibly. “Hochul forks over another $4B to bail out Mamdani’s NYC budget woes,” the New York Post complained. The right-wing Center Square agreed, also calling it a “bailout,” a word that also seems to have become a talking point of Hochul’s Republican opponent, the far-right Bruce Blakeman of Long Island.This characterization of increased state funding as a bailout, with its implications that the city is being fiscally reckless, is wrong. The funding is a product of steady leadership from Mayor Zohran Mamdani, made possible by the organizing of and pressure from New Yorkers. The mayor walked a delicate tightrope throughout negotiations at the city and state level around this budget, being the tribune for a movement that angrily campaigned to get the governor to do more for the city by taxing the rich, while also working in partnership with the governor to fund major campaign promises around universal childcare policies that were not possible to achieve without the her cooperation.The state funding that Mamdani and Hochul just announced will help fund the city’s needs and close the budget gap that was exacerbated by the mismanagement of previous mayor Eric Adams and by the cruel cuts of President Donald Trump. The budget that the city ended up with is far from perfect or transformative. But overall, it moves the city in the right direction, especially given the immense structural difficulties that Mamdani was up against.Hochul, who once said she would never increase taxes on the rich, ended up imposing a pied-à-terre tax on second homes worth over $5 million, which will provide half a billion. This is hardly the extent of taxation on the wealthy that Mamdani and…
