"Viewed historically, especially in the context of a total budget of $127 billion, the city's current $5.4 billion projected deficit-already down from the $12 billion announced a few weeks ago-looks less like a fiscal chasm and more like a pothole. Yet the demands of custom, when coupled with the young mayor's evident wish to project the financial sobriety signalled by his dark suits and sombre neckties, meant that the press corps-and their readers, viewers and listeners-were again treated to the latest production."
"Although that sounds like Mamdani, who used the same phrase to describe the city's current budget challenges, it was actually former Governor Basil Paterson averting doom back in 2009. When David Dinkins took office in 1990, he, too, inherited a fiscal crisis, as did Rudy Guiliani, who had to close a projected gap of $2.3 billion-out of a total of $31.6 billion-in his first year."
New York has repeatedly faced fiscal crises across multiple administrations, including during 1990, 2009, and recent months. The city's projected $5.4 billion deficit, reduced from $12 billion, is small relative to the $127 billion total budget but prompts high-stakes political positioning. Mayor Zohran Mamdani signaled willingness to raise property taxes by 9.5% if the state blocks proposed increases in city income taxes on millionaires and higher corporate levies. The mayor's public presentation emphasized financial sobriety and followed theatrical conventions of political brinkmanship, echoing past warnings and cultural references to dramatic ultimata.
Read at The Nation
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