Up against a governor who vowed not to tax the rich, Zohran Mamdani delivered a New York City budget that isn’t transformative but protects public goods and makes progress on his affordability agenda.
  • givesomefucks@lemmy.worldEnglish
    20·
    4 days ago

    providing $4 billion from the state to help close the city’s budget gap, the media was quick to frame it as if Mamdani and the city were spending irresponsibly. “Hochul forks over another $4B to bail out Mamdani’s NYC budget woes,” the New York Post complained. The right-wing Center Square agreed, also calling it a “bailout,” a word that also seems to have become a talking point of Hochul’s Republican opponent, the far-right Bruce Blakeman of Long Island.

    Lol…

    It’s hard to make it thru a Jacobin article these days, but I don’t know why they didn’t just point this out:

    New York City contributed 54.5%, or $68.8 billion, of state revenues whereas the rest of the state contributed 45%, or $57.5 billion. When place of residence is used, New York City contributed 46.7% of total revenue

    And:

    New York City received 40.5%, or $47.6 billion, of State Operating Expenditures, whereas the rest of the state received $69.7 billion, or 59.5%

    https://islg.cuny.edu/blog/fiscal-flow-nyc-albany-press-release

    NYC paid 21.2 billion into state coffers than it got out…

    A 4 billion “bailout” doesn’t even cancel it out for the current year.

    That’s all that needs to be said when people claim this is a “bailout”. It’s NYCs fucking money, cities all over subsidize rural areas, which would be fine if people understood what was happening and were grateful, but every rural area wants to kill the cities keeping them alive, because cities vote D.