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The city's relationship with its wealthiest residents' most profitable corporations also has to change so that we can bring this city back to firm financial footing. You know, as the mayor, I am legally required to balance the budget of this fiscal year and the next. That is something we are fully going to do. In order to do so, we have to deal with these structural problems.
That was New York City Marizona and mom Donnie speaking with Bloomberg just a few weeks ago, warning of the city's twelve point six billion dollar budget gap over the next two years. Mark Levin he is New York City Control, where he joins us now on set to discuss market's.
Great to see you, Great to see both of you. Thank you.
So let's start exactly there, the budget gap. I mean, when you take a look at how that possibly could be fixed, is there any hope of fixing that from the revenue side or is it going to be cutting costs?
You know, our revenues are pretty good right now, partly because the finance industry is doing so well, but more than that, commercial real estate's doing the best it's been for twenty years. The problem is that we have some expenses that are growing very fast that have not been accounted for in the budget. And when we took a look at the books, what we've seen is a very big gap, which is something we haven't seen in New York City since at this scale, since the financial crisis.
How are we going to solve it? It's going to require help on many fronts. We're going to definitely need to find efficiencies within the city government. We're going to need some help from Albany. I hope I'll be going there Wednesday to plead that case. I think we can get through this, But this is beyond what we have seen in a budget cycle in probably fifteen years.
Let's talk about what you're seeing when it comes to cost because taking a look at some of them, it seems like there's sources that are constantly under budget, and if you want to call it that, over time for uniform officers for example, comes to mind. But where are you seeing the biggest growth when it comes to that side of the ledger?
Yeah, so that we have an equivalent of a Section eight housing voucher in New York City. It's got a weird acronym. It's called City Steps. We're one of the only places in the country that has a local version of this great program. Guys, is growing by four percent a month, and I think your audience understands exponentials, and so it's doubling every eighteen months, and we projected it'll be over three billion dollars next year.
Butiam, I'm back up. Section eight to me means something different than I'm sure what you're talking about, because I think of mash and corporal Clinger. Right, you're talking about housing value, money that we pay people to afford to be able to live here.
Yeah, this is a voucher you can use to rent housing in a private building, right, so not public housing. You can go to a home you can find throughout New York City. Section eights a limited supply from the federal government. We have a local version. Great program. It's growing out an astounding pace.
What we just give we give out more and more.
You're saying, yes, we've expanded the qualifications. It's designed for people who are in homeless shelters or in danger of homelessness, to help them get out of the shelter.
Who wants them to get out of New York City.
I mean, why have.
In the most expensive city in America? Why are we putting people up here? Why not move them to places that are cheaper to live.
Well, we want them to be New Yorkers. This is part of our city, in our community, and they have family ties here and more. And we can do this, but we're not budgeting for it, and it's blown a hole in our budget. That is billions of dollars. Raining in or updating programs like that is going to be key to getting out of this hole.
Well, you mentioned, for example, the performance of Wall Street. You think about how well Wall Street did, how well the stock market did over the past year. Would you expect that to shrink the deficit when we get those updated numbers. Are some of the costs that you're talking about that are growing exponentially going to just have that come out in the wall?
Yeah, I think it was. New York City's economy on the whole is doing very well. Also, real estate taxes are producing more revenue than we expected, sales tax again, personal income tax, and we do expect to further revise those numbers because the bonus season we had. One Wall Street person told me it's the second best they've seen in their entire career this year for December of twenty
twenty five. But even factoring that in, we're going to be left with a whole And so while we want to keep the economy going, we want to grow New York City's economy. That is the ultimate solution to our budget problems, and I'm going to be a voice for that as comptroller. We have a complete freeze on hiring in New York and the private sector in New York. In New York City, with the exception of home healthcare AIDS, it's all come to a screeching halt over the past year.
We've got to get that going as well. So I'm going to be a voice for getting jobs growing again. Because it's going to drive tax revenue. That won't be enough. We're also going to have to have some efficiencies in government and a little helpful almoney.
There is the line of thinking out there that mayor Mom Donnie might be exaggering the scope of the budget problems to really make his case for tax hike, which is popular which his base of supporters, and then very unpopular with people outside his base. I mean, what do you make of some of.
That we have a real gap, and I'd rather have a mayor who embraces it so we can fix it then a mayor who just tries to keep kicking the can down the road. So I think this is good news. Look, I think that we've got to get our fiscal house in order. I do think we need more help from Albany. Everything needs to be on the table. I would think potentially including tax increases, but you hear me talking about some other priorities. This is what I'm pushing for. I
think this is solvable. This is I don't use the word crisis. I think this is a challenge that we can solve with smart policy.
I just wonder, you know, even if you agree that you know, pre K should be free and in a good wealthy society, it probably should be. Even if you agree that local transportation should be free, which is I guess a nice to have, even if you want to continue to pass out and ever growing at four percent a month amount of housing vouchers for people to live here, isn't it when you're in a budget deficit like this time, to stop just giving away so much money.
Look, we are definitely going to need a little more discipline in New York City's budget. You've heard me talk about one of the programs, and there's many others. That doesn't mean we can't do bold things. And in the case of childcare, I really do think New York City needs I think every place should have it. The Governor put about a billion on the table to help us start on that, and we can begin to phase in
a program like that. It's going to take several years just building it out logistically, but this is going to be a tougher budget, and I think we can confront that still try to be creative on addressing affordability and more. Look, some of what we need to do is not about the budget. We got to build more housing. We need a half million more units in New York City. That's going to require, in part, unleashing private sector development as well. It's not only about what the public sector can do.
We need a partnership and we also need probably better transportation from outside in so that we don't build all that housing on this tiny island right there is just and has been a core case about building this new tunnel project. Have you thought about just naming Penn Station or the Empire State Building after President Trump and trying to get money like that.
I'm gonna be honest, I would take that trade because we desperately need to invest in this infrastructure, and we could also rename it after this guy's out of office, whatever it takes. We need regional transportation infrastructure, and every single commuter train stop should have residential density around it. That would also help alleviate the housing affordability crisis within the five brols of New York City.