Jon Levine writes for the Washington Free Beacon about one of the New York City mayor’s latest bad ideas.
New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani (D.) is sinking a quarter of a billion dollars into his new Office of Community Safety—which is intended to deploy social workers to respond to hate crimes, mental health crises, and other events typically handled by police—as the city faces a historic budget crisis.
Mamdani established the office in a March 19 executive order and revealed in a signing ceremony on the same day that it would begin with a $260 million budget. While Mamdani moved those funds from existing city programs to his new office, he pledged to “add more funding down the line,” according to the New York Times. During his mayoral campaign, Mamdani pledged to fund the office to the tune of $1.1 billion.
“It’s remarkable that Mayor Mamdani is supposedly grappling with a historic budget gap of $5.4 billion through fiscal 2027—despite the absence of a recession or financial crisis—yet has managed to include $260 million for a new office with only two staffers,” John Ketcham, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, told the Washington Free Beacon.
“At $260 million, the office represents roughly 5 percent of Mamdani’s budget gap, more than the approximately $200 million in savings the mayor touted last week,” Ketcham went on. “Many of those savings are speculative and may never materialize. The mayor has not announced a hiring pause, a step any serious effort to reduce spending would include, as personnel costs make up the largest share of the city budget.”
Mamdani’s proposed $127 billion budget has led multiple credit rating agencies to issue warnings about the city’s long-term financial prospects, and though the mayor pledged to find $1.7 billion in cuts, he has only announced $200 million so far.
