New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Wednesday said the city’s wealthiest must pay more in taxes to help fill the staggering $12 billion budget deficit he was left by his predecessors.
Mamdani, in an interview with CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin at City Hall, said his administration will be up front with New Yorkers about budget issues that have been “hidden from them for far too long.”
Indeed, the new mayor is staring down a budget shortfall that is projected to total $12.6 billion over the next two fiscal years, NYC Comptroller Mark Levine said earlier this month.
“This is at a scale that’s actually greater than what we saw here in New York City during the Great Recession,” Mamdani said.
He attributed the crisis to “gross fiscal mismanagement,” pointing to former Mayor Eric Adams and ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
Mamdani, the 34-year-old former state assemblyman and self-described democratic socialist, had campaigned on hiking taxes on the city’s top earners.
He vowed to raise the city’s corporate tax rate to 11.5%, matching New Jersey’s, while imposing a flat 2% tax on New Yorkers earning more than $1 million a year.
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