Gov. Hochul’s executive budget proposal gets high marks for investing in child care, general affordability, infrastructure and more, all while maintaining her commitment to not raising any corporate or personal income taxes. Mayor Mamdani, who campaigned on child care, also campaigned to raise both levies, which he reiterated again yesterday.
Mr. Mayor, just take the child care program that Hochul is handing you and forget the taxes. And thank the governor for pushing for a four-year extension of mayoral control of the city’s schools.
The governor is managing to hit a balance here, not raising any taxes but continuing some existing and moderate increases in the state’s top corporate tax. It’s called the status quo.
This budget also reflects an additional complication, one that Hochul’s predecessors have not necessarily faced: an openly hostile federal government that is run increasingly as a personal fiefdom by an erratic president who is flanked by aides hell-bent on reducing state capacity.
Additional funding for Medicaid and food assistance, among other services that have traditionally received significant federal support, is a recognition that at least to some extent we have to be prepared to go it alone. The federal administration will keep losing in court as it tries to unilaterally suspend federal payments and grants to states on Donald Trump’s whim and hopefully the Congress will be less cowardly, but in the meantime we could see crucial funding go away abruptly.
It’s easy to think of child care as a relatively niche area of policy, particularly by those who are not currently contending with the prospect or reality of attempting to fund the escalating costs of young kids while mired in rising prices across the board. Yet this issue alone has significant effects across the economy; families are delaying having children, parents are being forced to exit the workforce altogether, they are depleting savings if they have them at all and reducing discretionary spending of all kinds, impacting everyone, not just those who have or are considering children.
If the governor wants this to be her legacy, at some point someone is going to have to address the long-term funding of this expansive child care and education apparatus beyond this election year. As things stand, there are a couple of years of runway, which is not nothing, but voters have over the years learned the hard lesson that a splashy rollout is not enough. Maybe she doesn’t have to answer this question now, but should she win another four years in November, the bills for consistent funding will come due in her next term and there still could be extreme uncertainty out of Washington.
As is typical in these budgets, policy is very much on the table, with Hochul among other things pushing for a four-year extension of mayoral control over NYC public schools. The best extension would be indefinite, but we’ll take four years, as it’s better than the two or three year extensions Albany has granted recently. A four-year continuation will ensure that Mamdani can govern at least a whole term without having to go to Albany to beg and horse-trade just to keep the schools under his purview.
Now comes the tussle over the final budget and Hochul must stand fast against Mamdani’s calls for higher taxes.
