Zohran Mamdani hit day 69 of his mayoralty Tuesday with a pair of partial wins in Albany and a concrete expansion of early childhood education on Staten Island, as the city’s grinding budget fight moved into a new phase.
The state Assembly and Senate released their one-house budgets Monday evening, and both chambers backed corporate tax hikes that matched what Mamdani had been pushing for, along with an income tax increase on the wealthiest New Yorkers. The income tax proposal fell short of what the mayor wanted, but the overall direction of the legislative budgets put Albany’s Democratic majority clearly on his side of the argument and against Gov. Kathy Hochul, who has refused to entertain new tax increases.
“The legislature and I agree: we cannot bridge this budget deficit on the backs of working-class New Yorkers,” Mamdani said in a statement Tuesday. “I’m grateful that the Assembly and Senate One-House Budgets recognize the scale of the fiscal crisis facing New York City.”
The city is staring down a $5.4 billion budget shortfall. The Mamdani administration has placed the blame for that gap squarely on former Mayor Eric Adams and his fiscal management. The hole was even larger in February, sitting at roughly $7 billion, before Mamdani and Hochul reached an agreement for the state to send the city a $1.5 billion payment. That deal softened the crisis without resolving it, and Mamdani has continued pressing Albany for more.
The one-house budgets represent something real. They signal that Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, and their Democratic conferences are willing to go further than the governor on taxes. Whether those proposals survive the final budget negotiation is a separate question entirely, and Hochul has not budged from her position. Her office said in a statement that she “looks forward to negotiating with the legislature to reach a budget agreement that makes New York safer and more affordable,” without addressing the tax increases directly.
Hochul told reporters last week she was “not frustrated” by Mamdani’s calls to tax the rich, a notably mild characterization of a dispute that has defined the early weeks of his administration. Moderate Democrats and fiscal conservatives have watched the mayor’s push with open anxiety, worried that corporate and high-income tax increases will push businesses and top earners out of the state.
Mamdani’s team takes a different view, arguing that the city’s contribution to the state economy is so disproportionately large that it demands more support from Albany. That fight over how the city and state divide resources is older than any of the current players, but Mamdani has pursued it with a directness that marks a clear break from the Adams years.
There was one sharp note in Tuesday’s otherwise celebratory message from City Hall. Neither one-house budget included language extending mayoral control over New York City Public Schools. The current system gives the mayor authority over the school system, and that authority needs to be renewed periodically by the state legislature. Mamdani bristled at the omission, and his team will need to press Albany on that separately before the deadline passes.
On Staten Island, the mayor announced an expansion of the city’s 3-K program, adding 1,000 new seats for three-year-olds. The borough has historically received less city investment than the other four, and the 3-K expansion represents a tangible delivery on Mamdani’s affordability agenda beyond the budget debate. Universal early childhood education was a centerpiece of his campaign, and adding seats on Staten Island signals he intends to treat the expansion as a citywide commitment rather than one concentrated in his political base.
The next major test comes in the budget negotiations themselves. Hochul controls that process, and her resistance to tax increases has been consistent and public. Mamdani heads into those talks with the legislature behind him and a $5.4 billion gap still to close. What he gets out of Albany will define the rest of his first year more than almost anything else.
