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Mayor Zohran Mamdani has hired a fellow comrade from a lefty think tank for the city’s budget office — inserting the true believer into the historically non-partisan office of “bean counters” with a newly minted role to push the young lawmaker’s socialist ideals, The Post has learned.
Nathan Gusdorf joined the administration earlier this month after spending four years as the executive director of the Fiscal Policy Institute, a pro-union research group that has repeatedly pushed for increased taxes, downplaying the slow growth of wealthy New Yorkers, and ramping up social services in the state.
The DSA adjacent official — who has publicly backed Hizzoner’s slate of socialist freebies — is now serving as the Office of Budget and Management’s deputy director for policy planning.
The gig, which has not existed under prior admins, per sources, is tasked with “building a division that can provide strategic policy advice across a wide range of tax and budget issues, including revenue measures, government efficiency, capacity building, and program delivery,” Gusdorf wrote on LinkedIn.
News of its creation comes as Mamdani spars with Albany, as well as the city council, on how to get a ballooning $127 billion budget under control, while the young socialist continues to push for government handouts, such as “free” childcare and city-run grocery stores.
The policy-pushing position has former officials and budget watchdogs sounding the alarm about the blatant politicization of office, where its only ideology has previously been to simply improve the fiscal health of the city.
“That’s a bullshit job,” one former official raged when told of the post.
They are bean counters,” they added. “The role of the budget director is to tell the mayor how many beans we have, no matter if he likes it or not. OMB is supposed to be imperial and technical, and mostly it’s to tell the mayor, ‘No it’s not a good idea.'”
A budget watchdog slammed the political appointee, saying, “The mayor’s budget office should call balls and strikes only.”
“Instead, they have been pushing an agenda like a radical socialist think tank. The lines have been blurred,” they added.
OMB is the Big Apple’s chief financial agency, employing more than 400 people, that is tasked with making sure taxpayer dollars are spent efficiently and forecasting revenue.
Gusdorf, who declined to comment for this piece, has been vocal about his support for Mamdani’s policies.
He’s pushed universal child care in an interview titled “What Universal Childcare Should Look Like” in the left-wing mag Jacobin and defended Mamdani’s massive slate of proposed spending while mayor-elect in a piece he penned, “Mayor Mamdani’s Budget Can Add Up.”
“Tax Increases Will Be Necessary,” one section is titled.
“These fiscal challenges are surmountable,” he writes about billions of dollars in more spending and federal cuts, adding, “for the simple reason that the state and the city are both in a sound economic position to raise taxes given the stock of upper-middle- and high-income earners.”
Gusdorf has also repeatedly given the Democratic Socialists and others pushing for tax increases cover when critics warn about higher earners, who contribute an outsized portion to the budget, potentially leaving New York.
A study in 2023 by Gusdorf’s progressive group, which has been cited by Mamdani’s admin, argued prior tax hikes did not lead to richer folks leaving New York, instead, they said they left at a quarter the pace of lower-salaried people.
However, a report from the more fiscally conservative group, The Citizens’ Budget Commission, countered that last year, saying the Empire State’s growth of people making a million dollars or more lagged compared to other parts of the country.
He’s also given the admin and their comrades alike one of their top talking points as they pressure Gov. Kathy Hochul to raise taxes.
“The top 1% just received a trillion-dollar federal tax cut. It’s only fair that they now pay a little bit more to make New York City affordable,” Gusdorf told the Wall Street Journal last fall.
The new gig echoes what the co-leader of the NYC DSA called for last year, when she urged members to infiltrate all levels of city government to push their far-left policies.
‘[W]e must plug Zohran organizers and supporters into lower-level city institutions en masse,” NYC-DSA co-chair Grace Mausser wrote also “Jacobin,” which dubs itself as the “leading voice of the American left.”
City Hall did not respond for comment.
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