The reality of running a big city is hitting two mayors, Michelle Wu and socialist Zohran Mamdani, as they face businesses fleeing their cities while walloping taxpayers with huge tax hikes rather than cutting their ballooning budgets.
Wu issued an ultimatum to Massachusetts lawmakers to approve her commercial tax hike or hit Boston property owners with a 13% hike. Her strategy failed miserably as lawmakers refused to give in to her demands.
In New York, Mamdani issued a nearly identical ultimatum to state lawmakers to approve his proposal to hike taxes on the wealthy and corporations.
He will hit residents with a 9.5% property tax increase if state lawmakers rebuff his demands.
“After years of fiscal mismanagement, we’re staring at a $5.4 billion budget gap and two paths,” the rookie New York City mayor posted on X. “One: Albany can raise taxes on the ultra-wealthy and the most profitable corporations and address the fiscal imbalance between our city and state. The other, a last resort: balance the budget on the backs of working people using the only tools at the city’s disposal.”
Mamdani’s demands don’t seem to be moving lawmakers either, bursting his socialist bubble. It means even more New York City residents and businesses will be fleeing the regime to avoid the huge tax hikes.
Both Mamdani and Wu are blaming state lawmakers for their fiscal problems rather than compromise or changing their tactics. Wu has gone so far as to punish her opponents in the state Senate by running candidates against them.
The end result is that both socialist icons will be passing on massive tax hikes to middle class people they promised to help in their campaigns.
Wu is also facing an alarming decline in commercial property values in downtown Boston which is taking a huge toll on the $4.8 billion budget, which is financed through property taxes.
But she stubbornly refuses to cut her budget to prevent the tax hikes, instead adding scores of diversity positions. Her budget has grown 26% over the last four years, from $3.8 billion to $4.8 billion.
Mamdani is cutting about 5,000 officer positions in the New York City Police Department to pay for his expensive socialist and diversity programs.
His $127 billion spending plan includes $5.6 million a year for the Office of Racial Equity and $4.6 million for the similarly named Commission on Racial Equity. He is also paying for a number of high-level diversity and inclusion positions throughout his administration, and $835,000 a year for the Commission on Gender Equity.
Wu – in contrast with Mamdani – has not gone so far as to whack her Police Department budget.
But like Mamdani, her tax hikes and anti-business policies are causing hundreds of businesses to cut jobs or move out of the city entirely. And the number of children living in the city has dropped precipitously by about 10,000 in the last 15 years.
In New York City, thousands of jobs are leaving to states like Texas with low taxes and more business-friendly policies. Mamdani has proposed increasing New York City’s corporate tax rate from 7.25% to a whopping 11.5% and that is likely to worsen the exodus.
