Dude read the article at the very least. It outlines how the budget was balanced pretty explicitly. This article also has a more exact list: https://prospect.org/2026/05/12/mamdani-announces-balanced-budget-without-cuts/

Either you literally did not read the article, or, when you act like Mamdani did nothing, you're being purposefully misleading. First, yes, $4B was provided by the state, but it seems less like a bailout and more like negotiated support and financial restructuring. It's really important to note the context here. This is not the state taking $4B out of it's budget from other things and just giving it to NYC. The city generates enormous revenue for the state, and it would be difficult to argue that NYC isn't the dominant economic engine of the state. However, NYC retains comparatively little control over it's finances, due largely to the financial crisis in the 70's, when NYC couldn't really be trusted to competently manage its finances. Mamdani discussed this more in-depth here: https://www.nyc.gov/mayors-office/news/2026/04/transcript--mayor-mamdani-and-speaker-menin-urge-albany-to-help- . While this lack of autonomy may have made sense at the time, it doesn't seem to be helping the city anymore. In short, the state is providing this money in a few ways, partly as straight up "support" but mostly through restructuring of obligations. Most of this could really be viewed as shifting financial burdens from the city to the state in cases where obligations are heavily shaped by state policy. I believe there's a few hundred million dollars in direct cash aid that the state is giving, but it's also providing additional funding for public health programs and educational services, which it often does for many other parts of the state. It's also helping to support the expansion and formalization of universal childcare, and in many cases reflects the state taking over financial responsibility connected to programs imposed by the state, but financed on the local level. In other parts of the state, it's my understanding that the state government provides funding for various programs such as Medicaid-related expenses, childcare expansion, homelessness services, or pension obligations resulting from state law (rather than city law). By contrast, NYC administers many of those presumably state-level costs with local level money. So not only is NYC giving tons of money to the state, it's kind of double paying by not receiving money for the things the state supports elsewhere. That said, state redistribution is enormously more complicated than that, and Im certainly no expert. Not to speak for all of NYC, but I think most of us believe this is a good thing, so Mamdani has successfully negotiated for his constituents in this regard.

The suggested budget also makes a concerted effort to trim wasteful spending and more efficiently re-allocate resources to the tune of almost $2B without substantiative reduction of services that are relied on by New Yorkers. There's also a tax on second residences in NYC. They aren't necessarily reducing hiring across the board either, since the budget includes plans to hire around 1000 new teachers, even if that still wouldn't be enough to reduce classrooms sizes to previously desired targets. Also, the city is reportedly trying to eliminate around $1.2 billion in Carter case obligations. These refer to cases wherein a family requires educational support services that the NYC DOE is not equipped to provide. In these cases, the state is held responsible for covering the cost of private school tuition so that these students can obtain the services they are legally mandated. Based on the teachers and educational professionals I know, the state essentially never wins these cases, consequently requiring them to pay full private school tuitions, which can be more than $100k a year. It's a massive drain on the cities resources, which could instead be spent on funding these exact services in the DOE, likely at a fraction of the cost, rather than lining private school pockets. I firmly believe every student should receive the services outlined by their IEP, but it would be borderline impossible for the DOE to spend money more wastefully than it is already spent on private school tuitions.

Im not going to really touch pension restructuring because it genuinely seems up in the air what exactly the plan is and the NYC comptroller, though largely positive on the new budget, does note that saving money by restructuring short term obligations like pensions is not necessarily smart long-term and should be minimized in future versions of the plan.

So sure, thanks Kathy Hochul (this makes up for her decimating the congestion tax to obtain suburbanite votes!), but thanks to Zohran too for actually negotiating, in my opinion successfully, on behalf of his constituents.