City budget is Zohran Mamdanis first big task with spendthrift staffers by his side

Zohran Mamdani won the mayoralty on a series of slogans, often without details on how he would achieve them.Now that he’s taking the reins of the city, however, slogans won’t cut it.He has to talk turkey.By Feb.

1, the City Charter requires Mamdani to submit a preliminary budget — giving New Yorkers their first real sense of what their new mayor will prioritize.Expect it to approach or exceed $120 billion as he spells out how he’ll fund existing programs, plus his freebie agenda.He and the City Council must adopt a balanced budget by June 30.Unlike Mayor Eric Adams, a relative budget hawk, Mamdani likely won’t face pushback from the far left Council during budget negotiations.And with former de Blasio-era officials and nonprofit executives — plus Democratic Socialist operatives — staffing Mamdani’s transition team and key posts, it’s clear his administration has little interest in fiscal restraint.Dean Fuleihan, an old hand in City Hall and Albany, will return to his former job as first deputy mayor.He held that role under Mayor Bill de Blasio, too, after serving as budget director — where he oversaw years of city spending increases that grew at up to four times the rate of inflation.Maria Torres-Springer, a veteran of the Bloomberg, de Blasio and Adams administrations, has the technocratic know-how to guide the fledgling mayor through the government’s sprawling bureaucracy.But while Mamdani may be setting up for de Blasio 2.0, he faces one key difference: The city is in a much more fragile economic position today.De Blasio took office after Mayor Mike Bloomberg spent 12 years modernizing the city bureaucracy, growing the local economy and rezoning swaths of land along the East River to accommodate an influx of higher-paid workers.That strong fiscal foundation gave de Blasio a smooth first term, freeing him to focus on his signature universal pre-K program. Mamdani is wading into choppier economic waters.For one thing, President Donald...