Enough with Mamdani’s ‘mystery math’ budget games

Moody’s downgraded New York City’s bond outlook from stable to “negative” Wednesday, while Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s budget chief went AWOL rather than answer City Council questions about the mayor’s mystery-math budget.

“New York City is spending more money than it takes in,” city Comptroller Mark Levine warned the council Finance Committee; he says city expenses are growing faster than revenues, pushing the budget gap to nearly $7.4 billion — $2 billion more than Mamdani claimed in his January budget plan.

He pointed to out-of-control outlays such as the FHEP housing voucher program, up 940% since 2019 to $2.5 billion.

The city Independent Budget Office says the vouchers could blow an added $3.4 billion hole in the budget.

Mamdani budget chief Sherif Soliman begged off on explaining any of this, supposedly because it’s Ramadan — which is ridiculous: Plenty of other Muslims manage to work while fasting.

Council Speaker Julie Menin and Finance Committee Chair Linda Lee cite numbers debunking any need to raid the city’s “rainy fund” (meant for a fiscal emergency) to close the gap, as Mamdani wants; they point to $1.7 billion from cost-cutting and higher-than-predicted tax revenue, for starters.

Yet Soliman won’t show up for days or weeks to explain the mayor’s math to the contrary.

The council’s pretty united against Mamdani’s call to hike property taxes nearly 10% if Gov. Kathy Hochul refuses to give him the other tax hikes he’d rather have to fund his bloated $127 billion spending plan.

The mayor’s stated intent to spend more despite the gaps, combined with his spastic talk about how to fund it, directly explain the Moody’s downgrade.

Mamdani’s strategy is to blackmail Albany for a tax increase, rather than doing any reasonable cost costing.

Menin and Lee dropped a brutal comment on the Moody’s downgrade, demanding a “responsible path forward” including “long-term savings and fiscal discipline needed to protect New York City’s financial stability.”

It’s been decades since a mayor was markedly more reckless than the City Council; buckle up, New York.