Politics & Government Quiet since Aug 13 Updated Aug 13, 2026
The $126 billion budget
Mayor Mamdani's first budget closed a $12 billion deficit his administration attributes to Adams-era underbudgeting, a gap the Comptroller and the Independent Budget Office had also projected. The dispute that stalled the deal was over CityFHEPS housing vouchers, which began when Adams refused to implement the Council's 2023 expansion laws; the courts, and then this budget, forced them through. One Bronx council member voted no and said the city's poorest districts got the smallest share.
The story so far
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Aug 13, 2026 Latest
The state Financial Control Board praised Mayor Mamdani's first budget for finally putting the city's true costs on the books, but still projected budget gaps as large as $8.5 billion by fiscal 2030.
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Jul 29, 2026
Mayor Mamdani ordered every city agency to find another 2.5 percent in savings for fiscal years 2027 and 2028, on top of $1.77 billion already identified this year, as Comptroller Mark Levine projected a budget gap of at least $6 billion next year. City Hall said layoffs are not on the table.
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Jun 30, 2026
The Council adopted the $126 billion budget 45 to 6. CityFHEPS got $175 million in new funding with no work requirement, baselined at $125 million in later years; Fair Fares was extended. Council Member Althea Stevens of the Bronx was the lone Democratic no, saying districts with double the citywide poverty rate got smaller investments than wealthier ones.
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Jun 28, 2026
Advocates and council members pressed Mamdani to fund the voucher expansion, the city's main tool for keeping families out of shelters.
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Jun 26, 2026
A standoff over expanding CityFHEPS housing vouchers stalled the budget deal days before the July 1 deadline.
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May 12, 2026
Mamdani released an executive budget he said eliminated the $12 billion deficit without service cuts, dropping the property tax hike. It leaned on $8 billion in state assistance over two years, a pied-a-terre tax on homes over $5 million worth about $500 million annually, $1.77 billion in efficiency savings, and a $500 million delay to the class size reduction timeline, while restoring $2 billion to the rainy day fund. He said many insisted the only way out was an austerity budget, and the administration rejected that.
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Mar 11, 2026
Comptroller Mark Levine's office reviewed Mamdani's $127 billion FY27 preliminary budget, which proposed a 9.5 percent property tax increase worth about $3.7 billion a year. Levine estimated smaller remaining gaps of $797 million in FY26 and $2.85 billion in FY27, and said the new administration's accounting was significantly more transparent than the Adams administration's deliberate understating of costs like shelter and public assistance.
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Jan 1, 2026
In late January 2026, Mamdani announced at a City Hall press conference that the city faced a $12 billion deficit across fiscal years 2026 and 2027, blaming gross fiscal mismanagement under Adams. Former state budget official Paul Francis wrote in Vital City that the gap was no surprise: Comptroller Brad Lander had estimated in August 2025 a $4.2 billion FY26 gap growing to $8.8 billion in FY27, with the IBO and Citizens Budget Commission publishing similar forecasts.
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Oct 30, 2025
The city adopted a rule raising Fair Fares income eligibility from 145 percent to 150 percent of the federal poverty level, the second expansion in two years and the ceiling in place when the FY27 budget talks began.
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Jul 10, 2025
The Appellate Division reversed a lower court and directed the Adams administration to implement the 2023 CityFHEPS expansion laws, which raise income eligibility from 200 percent of the poverty line to 50 percent of area median income and extend vouchers to households at risk of eviction. Justice John R. Higgitt wrote that the City Council was not preempted from legislating in the field of rental assistance. City Hall filed for a further appeal on August 11.
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Feb 14, 2024
The Legal Aid Society filed a proposed class action in New York State Supreme Court on behalf of four New Yorkers shut out of CityFHEPS, arguing the Adams administration was refusing to implement voucher expansion laws the Council passed in 2023 over the mayor's veto. Judith Goldiner of Legal Aid said the laws are not discretionary and the mayor has to obey them.
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Jan 1, 2019
In 2019, the city launched Fair Fares, giving New Yorkers with household incomes at or below 100 percent of the federal poverty level half-priced bus and subway fares.
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