Mamdani shrugs off ballooning cost of NYC free childcare plan as bombshell study shows $9B annual price tag

How much? Who cares! Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Tuesday shrugged off a shocking study that found his free childcare plan will cost taxpayers billions more than anticipated — as he and Gov.Kathy Hochul touted the popularity of their 2-K pilot program.Mamdani and Hochul announced that offers had been made to fill the 2,000 available seats, out of more than 7,500 families who applied for the first-of-its-kind free preschool program for 2-year-olds launching this fall in select neighborhoods.But the joint press conference, at BedRock Preschool in The Bronx, came a day after the nonpartisan Center for New York City Affairs found that growing universal childcare to cover all city kids from 6 weeks old to five years old — as Mamdani as promised — would cost $9 billion annually.

That’s a far cry from the $6 billion Mamdani advertised for the initiative, according to the study, which said ramping up free childcare would require adding some 10,000 seats and hiring some 23,000 workers.Neither Mamdani nor Hochul seemed particularly concerned with the reported cost overrun, nor with explaining how the massive gap would be closed other than levying additional taxes on the wealthy, the mayoral administration’s go-to piggy bank thus far.Asked about the study, Hizzoner touted the “partnership” with Hochul, reminiscing about the governor allocating an extra $1.2 billion in state funding to fuel the 2-K pilot and build up existing free pre-K and 3-K programs.After recapping the particulars of the initiatives and sharing a word-salad anecdote about parents being forced to travel miles from their home to find childcare, Mamdani finally offered an oblique answer.“And what I mean by that is that today we have families across the city spending, as the governor said, between 20 to $40,000 a year to raise their child in the nation’s most expensive city.And this is an initiative that we are working on not just for the short term, for the medium term, but the long term to make...