NYC Local News: Adams Leaves Nearly $5 Billion Budget Gap for Mamdani to Inherit

Adams Boosts Budget, Leaving a $4.7 Billion Hole for Mamdani

 

Looming budget deficits, no provisions for federal aid cuts and new commitments mark the departing mayor’s last word on the city’s financial plan.

This article originally appeared in The City.

By Greg David

Manhattan Voice

November 18, 2025

NYC LOCAL NEWS - Mayor Eric Adams may be on a visit to Israel, but Monday he left Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani a headache. He increased the budget for city government spending in the current fiscal year by about $2 billion to $118 billion, bequeathing a projected $4.7 billion deficit to be closed before the 2027 budget is adopted next summer. And he offered no plans to deal with federal aid cuts that could reach billions of dollars.

The release of what is known as the November budget modification is normally a high-profile affair with a mayoral presentation, a press conference and a detailed media briefing with the budget director. Monday the modification was announced in a press release in the early afternoon without warning.

The November report provides an update on where the city stands financially with the current fiscal year and the three future years it is required to project. Mamdani will have to propose his own budget by Feb. 1, a month after taking office. 

The mayor’s added spending included new commitments Adams has been touting in recent weeks including money to start adding 5,000 additional police officers — while Mamdani has said he wants to keep the police force at its current level of about 34,000 officers.

Adams’ move came in for criticism from outgoing Council Speaker Adrienne Adams (D-Queens) and finance chair Justin Brannan (D-Brooklyn), who called it irresponsible to saddle future budgets with money for new police officers without addressing the fact that the city is unable to keep staffing at current levels because it can’t retain officers.

The mayor also increased money for rental assistance and expanded a caregiver program for elderly residents by 3,000 spots.

The mayor also increased expected revenues for the first time in his four years in office, adding a little more than $400 million for 2027.

And he says he is leaving the city in good financial shape.

“Over the course of four on-time, annual budgets, our administration has delivered for working-class New Yorkers time and again, and this November financial plan update is another example of how our strong fiscal management is making New York City safer, more affordable, and improving New Yorkers’ quality of life,” he said in a statement.

Budget experts don’t agree. The Citizens Budget Commission responds that the administration is underestimating costs by as much as $4 billion, including at least $1 billion for city-funded housing vouchers and $600 million for homeless shelters. And police overtime is almost always higher than projected in the budget.

“This plan simply reaffirms that Mayor-elect Mamdani’s first budget proposal will have to close a $5 billion to $8 billion budget gap, prepare for federal hits, and fund progress on his priorities,” CBC President Andrew Rein said.

Budget experts say the coming year’s deficit may be much smaller than Adams estimates. A booming Wall Street is expected to boost income and corporate taxes for both this fiscal year and next. A new health plan for city workers is expected to save almost $1 billion a year. And the city is likely to do some debt refinancing to lower its interest costs.

But then the fiscal outlook darkens.

The city gets a little more than $7 billion in federal aid each year, which is expected to shrink during Mamdani’s term even if Trump doesn’t follow through on threats to cut off aid entirely. 

The state is expected to see much bigger losses in federal aid, which the Fiscal Policy Institute estimates at about $8 billion a year, primarily in Medicaid and SNAP food aid to New Yorkers, including in the city. It will be under tremendous pressure to replace the federal funds. When faced with budget troubles in the past, the state has forced local governments to assume more costs, especially for Medicaid.

Eventually, Mamdami will have to propose ways to fulfill his agenda including free child care for all, free buses, building 200,000 affordable housing units over a decade using relatively costly union labor and opening city-owned grocery stores. 

Free buses have been estimated to cost $700 million a year. Estimates of universal free child care are as high as $6 billion a year, especially with his pledge to raise the wages of many of the workers. He has pledged to spend $100 billion on affordable housing, $70 billion of it borrowed.

Mamdani’s transition team did not immediately respond to the new Adams budget numbers.