New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani recently warned New Yorkers that they have “for too long been misled and misinformed about the true state of our city’s finances.” He added, “I will be blunt. New York City is facing a serious fiscal crisis.”
The mayor’s proposed solutions are troubling: either raise the city’s already sky-high taxes or reach into its rainy day fund and retiree health-care trust fund, money set aside to pay for promised retirement health care benefits for public employees. Both of the mayor’s ideas would worsen the city’s financial woes and debt while also failing to address the underlying problem.
Borrowing from public employee health-care benefit reserves is an especially bad and costly idea. Withdrawn amounts must be replenished by taxpayers, plus interest. As it is, the city’s health care fund has just 5 cents of every $1 needed to pay for benefits that have already been promised to workers and retirees…