Back in November, just days after Zohran Mamdani won his election to become the next mayor of New York City, I wrote about the cost of all of his proposals from free child care to free buses. The free child care plan alone was estimated to cost $6 to $9 billion per year and that's just the cost to offer it in NYC, which is less than half of the population of the state.
The problem with all of these plans is that Mamdani had no way to pay for any of this. At the core of his big spending socialist plans was a promise to tax millionaires to cover all of his new spending. But statewide tax hikes are dependent on the approval of state legislators and the governor.
In January, Mamdani got a big win when he and Hochul publicly committed to a plan for more free child care statewide.
Ms. Hochul has proposed spending $1.7 billion on the expansion plan, which would bring the state’s total spending on child care during the next fiscal year — which begins on April 1 — to $4.5 billion. The plan will be included in Ms. Hochul’s proposed executive budget, which she will negotiate with leaders of the State Senate and Assembly in the coming months.
The funding would help the governor work toward a goal of expanding child care to all 4-year-olds statewide by the fall of 2028. It would also enable Mr. Mamdani to make New York City’s preschool program for 3-year-olds, known as 3-K, truly universal, and create a new free child care system for the city’s 2-year-olds, starting with 2,000 toddlers this fall and expanding each subsequent year...
Ms. Hochul was blunt on Thursday in saying she was unsure how the child care expansion would be funded in the future, despite her commitment to keeping it going, and whether it would require future tax increases. It can be risky for politicians to create new entitlements that voters will expect to continue without putting in place a dedicated funding source.
But creating one new unfunded mandate wasn't enough for Mamdani. He continued to push for more taxes statewide. His plan for doing this was to threaten a massive property tax hike in the city if Gov. Hochul refused to raise taxes. So in mid-February that's what he threatened to do.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Tuesday proposed to raise property tax rates in New York City by nearly 10 percent, a measure he is preparing as a “last resort” to be deployed if he cannot persuade Gov. Kathy Hochul to raise income taxes on the wealthy.
The suggested 9.5 percent increase would affect more than three million single-family homes, co-ops and condos and over 100,000 commercial buildings, Mr. Mamdani said as he delivered his preliminary spending plan.
The mayor acknowledged that his proposal would not merely force the wealthy to pay more taxes, but would also be a “tax on working- and middle-class New Yorkers,” and stressed that this was not his first choice.
But he noted that New York City mayors had little authority to raise taxes without the governor’s and Legislature’s acquiescence, and said that a city property tax increase — combined with raiding the city’s reserve funds — was the only way to address a looming budget deficit projected to reach $5.4 billion over two years.
Suddenly, all of the would-be socialists who voted this guy into office to raise taxes on other people realized the money for all of his big plans wasn't going to come from "the rich," it was gong to come from them. And just like that, they decided it was a terrible idea. The backlash was so fierce that Mamdani has now all but abandoned his threat. [emphasis added]
Numerous elected officials — from Mr. Mamdani’s left-leaning allies to centrist Democrats representing Black homeowners — said in no uncertain terms that raising property taxes was a nonstarter.
The mayor began to quietly retreat. He convened city and state lawmakers in a series of private meetings to hear their concerns and let them know he was highly unlikely to pursue the tax increase as he was pushing for more state revenue, according to interviews with nine lawmakers.
Now, five weeks after he proposed increasing property taxes by 9.5 percent, the mayor seems to have all but given up on the idea, even as Ms. Hochul shows no interest in raising income taxes on the rich — a priority for Mr. Mamdani’s democratic socialist base...
Several people involved in the city’s budget negotiations who were granted anonymity said City Hall officials were taken aback by the level of opposition to the proposal. One of Mr. Mamdani’s former colleagues in the State Legislature told the mayor that if he went through with the property tax proposal, he would be a one-term mayor.
I have no idea how these private meetings with lawmakers played out but I imagine it went something like this.
Dem Lawmaker: No one can afford a 10% property tax hike! Are you insane?!
Mamdani: We're committed to free child care and the governor refuses to raise taxes on the rich.
Dem Lawmaker: My constituents voted for you because you promised the leopard would east someone else's face. They are dead set against a plan in which the leopard eats their faces.
So the property tax hike is not going to happen and the state won't have the money to pay for this new child care entitlement unless it raises taxes. There's no doubt someone is going to pay and the would-be socialists in NYC don't seem to care who pays so long as it's not them.
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