Mayor Zohran Mamdani issued Gov. Kathy Hochul a stunning ultimatum Tuesday while unveiling his $127 billion budget proposal – tax the rich or he’ll raise property taxes by nearly 10%.
The eye-popping preliminary spending plan for the 2027 fiscal year would increase the city’s budget by a whopping $11 billion from 2026, and contains few cuts.
But the Democratic socialist brazenly claimed he would be “forced” to hit the pocketbooks of everyday New Yorkers if Hochul and Albany don’t comply with his push to raise income taxes on the wealthy.
He cast the 9.5% property tax increase — which would affect about 3 million residential units and 100,000 commercial properties — characterizing it as a regrettable “last resort” to close the city’s estimated $5.4 billion budget gap…