Days into his mayoralty, Mayor Mamdani got a significant political boost as he and Gov. Hochul announced a deal for universal child care. Mamdani should take it as a complete win on one of his main campaign planks.
Mamdani wanted to fund the child care program, by far the most expensive of his election promises, with higher income taxes on top earners and increasing the corporate tax rate. Hochul is delivering without raising any taxes.
Way to go, Guv.
A dozen years ago, a newly elected Mayor Bill de Blasio nearly derailed his signature achievement of universal pre-K by insisting that it be funded through higher taxes, even when then-Gov. Cuomo and the Legislature came up with a plan to avoid the new taxes.
Offered pre-K without the taxes, de Blasio stamped his foot, saying that the taxes were part of the package deal. He eventually came to his senses and pre-K, sans the taxes, was a major success of his term in City Hall.
Mamdani should take some lessons there and accept that this achievement can likewise come without the taxes. In any case, there’s cause for celebration now, as some 100,000 children will be covered in the initial implementation, which means tens of thousands of families that will have a significant burden lessened.
It is rare for a policy prescription to win as widespread support as universal child care enjoys, with backing from everything from socialist organizations to the business community, because they all understand that affordable child care is a precursor to stability.
A lack of access to child care is an issue that has cascading effects throughout our society and economy, dissuading people from having children in the first place, keeping parents out of the workforce, curtailing spending and causing people to leave New York altogether. This is a situation where what we invest will pay off in multiples over time, in ways that are obvious and more subtle, in the short and long terms.
As both the mayor and the governor emphasized in their joint announcement yesterday, the funding question is not the only relevant one. There are logistical kinks to be worked out, ranging from pay for providers — which must be high enough that recruitment is actually possible for what is a tough job — to the integration of home-based care and the oversight on all this.
After the debacle in Minnesota it should be a priority for the state to ensure that the money is actually being maximized in furtherance of child care and not lining anyone’s pockets, though not so stringently that the program lacks flexibility. It’s all a balance, one that will to some extent have to be figured out on the go, with some potential growing pains, but all in service to a laudable goal.
This deal goes to show what’s possible when the mayor and the governor can work together in furtherance of New Yorkers’ interests, something that we’ve unfortunately not gotten for large chunks of recent history.
We hope that, big ideological differences aside, Mamdani and Hochul and the Legislature can keep collaborating on what’s important for the city, including affordable housing, property tax reform and permanent mayoral control of schools, something that the new mayor has recently come around to.
Being willing to drop his signature tax raising plan shows that Mamdani is focused on what’s ahead, not on sticking with unworkable campaign promises from the past.
