NYC Comptroller Mark Levine issues warning, says budget gap is at $7.3 billion

Josephine Stratman, New York Daily News on Mar 11, 2026

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NEW YORK — As the City Council kicks off budget hearings, Comptroller Mark Levine is warning that the city is staring down a $7.3 billion budget gap over this fiscal year and the next — a more dire projection than the mayor’s most recent estimate.

“I can tell you that in all that time I — and we — have never seen a fiscal challenge as big as the one we face now,” Levine was set to say in prepared remarks before the Council, which were shared ahead of time with the Daily News.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani sounded the alarm at the beginning of the year about a possible $12.6 billion budget gap, but has walked that number down to $5.4 billion after including extra revenue and cash from the governor.

But Levine said the mayor’s revenue projections are too optimistic given the confluence of headwinds the city may face in the upcoming year — including the war on Iran and corresponding rise in oil prices, other threats from the Trump administration, weak job numbers and the impact of AI.

The comptroller’s new estimates found that the gap in the current fiscal year, which ends June 30, could reach $796 million, and the gap in fiscal year 2026, without a property tax increase, could reach $6.5 billion.

“I think they’re acknowledging that a lot is riding on continued strong performance on Wall Street,” Levine told reporters, pointing out that Mamdani himself has used the word “aggressive” when talking about his budget plan.

The mayor announced last month that he’s planning on balancing the budget by drawing down about $1 billion from the city’s reserves — a move Council Speaker Julie Menin said has never been done before.

Mamdani has also put forward a property tax hike in the city, in a push for Gov. Kathy Hochul to give the city more money, including by moving on his cornerstone priorities of raising taxes on the rich and on corporations.

Menin has also said that a property tax hike is a nonstarter. Mamdani has proposed a nearly 10% rate hike.

“The State should and can also do more to rectify years of imbalance and unfunded mandates,” he wrote in a budget analysis. “Raising the City’s already deeply inequitable property tax and drawing down long-terms reserves to close budget gaps, are troublesome actions that would bring harm to the city’s most vulnerable residents and the overall fiscal health of the City, respectively.”