Mamdani fancies himself a financial whiz hes in for a NYC budget surprise come January

On Tuesday, Mayor Zohran Mamdani and City Council Speaker Julie Menin reached a record $125.8 billion budget deal for fiscal 2027 that began the following day.The mayor boasted: “Socialists not only understand economics just as well as the capitalists who came before, but ..

.we can solve their years of mismanagement through an embrace of our principles.”Spare us the propaganda, Mr.

Mayor.The city budget isn’t in great shape.Lest anyone be fooled, Mamdani’s supposedly balanced budget rests on a series of one-time tricks that got him through this year — and won’t be available in the next.Remember back in January when he claimed he’d inherited a $12 billion deficit?A prudent budgeter would have identified the lowest-value uses of money and trimmed accordingly.Not Mamdani.Despite robust tax receipts, he labeled his inability to grow government even more of a “fiscal emergency.”He started demanding higher taxes on corporations and high earners from the state — which, thanks to Gov.

Kathy Hochul’s caution, he didn’t get.Now he claims he balanced the budget with the help of pension-contribution “savings,” but in truth, as Manhattan Institute’s Ken Girardin explained, he merely dodged today’s bill by dumping a bigger one on tomorrow’s taxpayers.To avoid making $2 billion a year in pension contributions over his two possible terms, Mamdani is forcing his successor to absorb about $7 billion in unnecessary interest costs between 2033 and 2037.What kind of financial whiz makes smaller credit-card payments today just to get killed on interest later?Mamdani also re-estimated expenses lower and agreed to Albany’s delaying its school class-size mandate.In the end, he and the council wound up spending 8.5% more than last year’s $116 billion budget.Just between the mayor’s proposal in May and the final deal, fiscal 2027 spending grew by $1.4 billion on various agency programs.Some “emergency.”Meanwhile, City Comptroller Mark Levine’s...