New York politicians are gearing up to tax the rich and businesses with state budget season approaching. Shutterstock / 9nong As budget season ramps up in City Hall and Albany, New Yorkers should prepare to be blitzed with grand promises of government goodies.
Such is life in a deep blue state that the hottest competition will be among far-left Dems to see who can promise the most freebies.
A close second will be the contest to see who is the most passionate about taxing businesses and the so-called rich to pay for those giveaways.
Think of it as a huge socialist bake-off, with Mayor Mamdani having already started the bidding by pledging that the road to Nirvana will be paved with much higher taxes and much more government spending.
That message carried him to a shocking victory last year, and most Dems are now members of his amen chorus.
Gov. Hochul pretends not to be, but her fig leaf of resistance is suspect and faces a real-life test.
The rich, of course, will have no real say in the matter, except to grumble and move out of the city and state to avoid the unfolding disaster.
Ditto for successful businesses, which are viewed by the left as so many chickens waiting to be plucked.
But as Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, noted Tuesday on Fox News, already “there’s a huge exodus taking place. It’s not good for the city.”
He added that sky-high taxers often “think they’re being moral by doing that, but they’re not. What they’re doing is they’re hurting your own city. And, you know, unfortunately, people vote with their feet.”
Even before the final act in the budget mash-up, it’s worth a detour to consider a prime example of how New York government has become so rapacious, to the point where no matter how much it taxes and spends, the need for more keeps expanding.
In that sense, City Hall has accidentally revealed a dirty little secret.
Namely, that the affordability crisis that has become the political siren song of the era is directly related to the cost of government itself.
There is irony aplenty in that Exhibit A comes in the form of what Mamdani and his comrades consider a major victory.
On Monday, the mayor announced his first free child-care program for municipal workers, which his office called a step in his plan to provide universal child care.
The pilot will include the children of city workers based at the lower Manhattan David N. Dinkins Municipal Building, at 1 Centre St., in addition to all Department of Citywide Administrative Services employees, no matter where they work.
The program will operate on the ground floor of the building and provide free year-round care Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Except that the city is first going to renovate the 4,000-square-foot site — at a whopping cost of $10 million.
Completion is slated for the fall, when the center is scheduled to open to about 40 children ages 6 weeks to 3 years old, the Mayor’s Office promises.
It pegs the annual operating cost at $2.3 million, which doesn’t sound like much in a city budget that could reach a total of $120 billion.
Ah, but as The Post calculates, the operating cost alone means taxpayers will be shelling out about $57,500 a year for each of the 40 children in the center.
That’s more than double the going cost of private child care for the same age group, which the paper reports as ranging from $23,400 to $26,000.
The difference is best thought of as proof of government inefficiency.
The city justifies spending that much by saying free care for city workers means it is “putting about $20,000 a year back in the pockets of working families in an effort to retain top talent and boost productivity.”
What it doesn’t explain is why it can’t provide the same service at even close to the same price charged by private companies.
Nor does it acknowledge the obvious fairness issue in that just 40 workers — out of a city payroll of 330,000 employees — will get a huge benefit paid for by all taxpayers, many of whom are struggling with their own child-care costs.
The break-the-bank tale is the latest example of why New York looks to be on course for a full-blown financial crisis.
As it faces a budget deficit of $5.4 billion for the new fiscal year that begins July 1, and as Mamdani wants to close the gap by tapping a rainy-day fund on top of his call for higher taxes, the mood on Wall Street has turned decidedly sour.
Three rating agencies downgraded the city’s credit outlook from stable to negative, a move that likely will lead to higher borrowing costs.
Even Comptroller Mark Levine, a Mamdani ally, notes that among the reasons the agencies cited was “the lack of a clear strategy” in the mayor’s preliminary budget to rebuild the cushion.
Soon enough, the whole mess is going to end up on Hochul’s lap.
Running for re-election, she’s tied her campaign to Mamdani, with the hope that his Pied Piper magic will rub off on her and that his legions of young followers will turn out for her in November.
Yet she still insists that she opposes his tax hikes, even as the far-left Legislature gets ready to back them.
Unfortunately, her history of opportunistic shape-shifting suggests she will cave in and back the hikes, believing that’s where the votes are.
She could be right, with polls showing her with a double-digit lead over the GOP nominee, Bruce Blakeman, the Nassau County executive.
But the margin of her lead has narrowed, and now stands at 13 points, according to a Siena poll released Tuesday.
The new poll contains three other clear warning signs for Hochul. Her lead in the city is still large but fell by 17 points, and independents now favor Blakeman by 7, instead of her by 5.
Another surprising finding is that by a 54-36% margin, statewide voters support President Trump’s push to require proof of citizenship when voters register and a photo-ID every time they vote.
If those trends hold and expand, Hochul won’t have much room to maneuver on the tax-and-spend front. With Wall Street already unhappy about the spending levels and the rise of municipal debt, a bid by her to please the Mamdani crowd could lead to a full-blown financial crisis and a stampede for the exits.
In that case, she would likely lose the election and go down in history as the governor who broke New York.
