Inside The New York City "Budget Crisis": PreK-12 Education

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  • You may have heard that New York City has a “budget crisis.” The reason you may have heard that is that our new Mayor Mamdani has been loudly proclaiming that mantra to anyone who will listen.

  • After taking office on January 1, Mamdani promptly came up with the “budget crisis” theme during his first month in office, of course blaming the supposed crisis on his predecessor Eric Adams; and he has been repeating the mantra regularly ever since.

  • From a Mamdani press release on January 28: TODAY, Mayor Zohran Mamdani outlined the “Adams Budget Crisis,” a fiscal emergency driven by years of staggering mismanagement under former Mayor Eric Adams. . . .

  • It’s not just a “crisis,” but also an “emergency.” And moving forward to two days ago, there was Mamdani once more, this time in the City Hall rotunda, harping on the same words again — and using them to demand that the state Legislature and Governor enact new taxes to provide him with additional revenue. From NBC News, April 28:

  • "New York City faces a budget crisis of historic magnitude," Mamdani said Tuesday during a joint press conference. "We've inherited a deficit larger than any since the Great Recession. Years of mismanagement and chronic under budgeting, alongside a structural imbalance between what New York City sends to the State and what we receive in return, have taken a toll. We cannot close this deficit with savings alone. We need new revenue.”

  • So has New York City actually been the subject of “chronic under-budgeting” as Mamdani asserts?

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Co-op City: What It Looks Like When Energy Reality Catches Up To You

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Co-op City: What It Looks Like When Energy Reality Catches Up To You

  • Co-op City, located (like the Yankees) in the New York City borough known as The Bronx, is the largest co-op apartment community in the City, and indeed in the United States. Built in the 1960s and 70s, it has more than 15,000 residential units in some 35 high-rise buildings, plus a smaller number of townhouses.

  • Co-op City has now suddenly become ground zero in the clash between energy fantasy and reality that is starting to come into focus as the deadlines of the State’s and City’s 2019 climate statutes start to get closer. The New York Post reports on the reality side of the story in a large piece today with the headline “NY’s climate mandates may send fees in affordable Co-Op City complex soaring from $950 to $4K.”‍ ‍

  • But before getting to that, let’s look at the fantasy side of the story. . .

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So How Is Zohran Mamdani's New Pied-à-Terre Tax Supposed To Work?

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So How Is Zohran Mamdani's New Pied-à-Terre Tax Supposed To Work?

  • Here in New York, we continue to wait for the announcement of the annual budget that was due on April 1. Negotiations among the Governor and legislative leaders continue, with one big open issue being the potential extension of the “net zero” deadlines of the Climate Act.

  • While many issues may remain open, one thing on which there appears to be agreement is what they are calling the “pied-à-terre” tax — a real estate tax surcharge on New York City apartments valued at $5 million and up that are owned by people who are not permanent residents of New York. We know that that tax is an agreed part of the budget package because Mayor Mamdani bragged about it in his cringey video of April 15, which I covered (and linked) in my April 17 post.

  • Both Mamdani and Governor Hochul have asserted that the new tax will raise approximately $500 million per year in new revenue for the City. However, neither Mamdani’s video nor anything else has disclosed the details of how this new tax will be implemented.

  • At first glance, implementation might seem easy.

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Update On New York Climate Act Negotiations: Details Starting To Emerge

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  • We’re now more than three weeks past the mandatory April 1 deadline for New York’s annual state budget. So far, few details have emerged about the reasons for the delay. Negotiations are supposedly taking place among the Governor and the leaders of the two houses of the State Legislature. But what are the sticking points?

  • It is likely that by far the biggest, if not the only significant sticking point is what to do about the impending deadlines of the troublesome Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act of 2019, or CLCPA. This Act sets required “renewable” energy and emissions reductions targets, with the earliest deadlines for those things in 2030. The Act also set a separate deadline in 2024 for issuing certain regulations. The latter deadline has been completely blown off.

  • Emissions reduction deadlines and related regulations may seem non-germane to the budget, but then this is New York. The budget process gives the politicians a way to conclude a must-pass deal behind closed doors without having to hold annoying public hearings that would be flooded by angry activists.

  • With the regulations long overdue, and an impossibly short four years to go to meet the first emissions reduction targets, one might think we are at a dead end.

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Could There Be Any Idea More Ignorant Than Government-Run Grocery Stores?

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Could There Be Any Idea More Ignorant Than Government-Run Grocery Stores?

  • When I consider our new Mayor Mamdani and his legions of committed followers, the thought I can’t get away from is “How is it possible to be this ignorant?”

  • Right now here in New York, Mamdani is moving forward with his plan to open a chain of government-owned grocery stores, at least one for each of our five boroughs.

  • The underlying concept is that groceries have become too expensive for low income people to buy, undoubtedly due to evil capitalists siphoning off vast profits somewhere in the system. In the latest iteration of his proposal, Mamdani has said that the government stores will sell “basic” products like bread, milk and eggs at “guaranteed cheaper” prices.

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Zohran Mamdani Gets Positively Giddy About Taxing The Rich

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Zohran Mamdani Gets Positively Giddy About Taxing The Rich

  • Here in New York, our new Socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani ran on a platform of “taxing the rich.”

  • But that leaves a question to which the answer up to now has not been completely clear: Does Mamdani advocate taxing the rich because he thinks it is good tax policy, or does he advocate taxing the rich as a way to take revenge and punish a group he thinks of as predators and oppressors?

  • Currently the New York Legislature and Governor are in the midst of their annual budget negotiations, in which one of the issues is whether Mamdani will be granted any of his “tax the rich” wishes. Word so far had been that the Governor has resisted those wishes, particularly the wish to increase the rates of income tax on high earners.

  • However, on tax day (April 15) news emerged that there is some kind of an agreement on one piece of Mamdani’s tax agenda, namely a proposal to impose a special tax or fee of some kind on expensive New York properties used by non-residents as second homes or “pieds-à-terre.”

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