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The mayor of New York is facing his first major crisis.
KEYSTONE
Mayor Zohran Mamdani speaks of a budget shortfall of around 12 billion dollars and blames his predecessor. He is calling for higher taxes on the rich and companies.
The socialist US politician Zohran Mamdani has been the new mayor of the New York metropolis since the beginning of the year and is already in crisis mode. The trigger is a massive budget deficit, which Mamdani claims to have inherited from his predecessor.
Specifically, Mamdani announced on Wednesday that the city's budget for 2026 and 2027 was around 12 billion US dollars uncovered. The Democrat, who won the mayoral election last November as a decidedly left-wing candidate, spoke of a heavy mortgage.
Mamdani accused former mayor Eric Adams of systematically under-budgeting central expenditure. For example, only 860 million dollars had been budgeted for social welfare, although the actual costs were around 1.6 to 1.7 billion dollars. Around half a billion was also missing for accommodation costs. Adams had handed over "a poisoned chalice" to the next government, said Mamdani.
Criticism was also directed at former governor Andrew Cuomo. Mamdani said that the state of New York had taken more money from the city over the years than it had given back. According to the mayor's office, New York City paid around 68.8 billion dollars to the state in 2022 and received 47.6 billion back. This imbalance has permanently weakened the city's finances.
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Mamdani announced that he did not want to tackle these "financial challenges" with austerity measures. Instead, he called for higher taxes for the rich and profitable companies as well as a fairer share of government revenue. At the same time, he emphasized that working New Yorkers should not pay for the crisis.
Acting Governor Kathy Hochul has been cautious about Mamdani's demands in previous statements. She rejects higher income taxes, but has signaled an openness to corporate taxes.
The reactions are mixed. Left-wing think tanks such as the Fiscal Policy Institute praise Mamdani's course, while representatives of Adams and Cuomo reject the accusations. Those close to Adams said that his budget management during the pandemic and migration had been solid.
There were also reactions from the conservative tabloid "New York Post", which is decidedly critical of Mamdani. It accuses him of "lies" and speaks of a staged budget crisis that had been known for a long time, and accuses Mamdani of dramatizing the deficit in order to push through tax increases for the rich and companies or to prepare for his own political failure.
