New York City in brief

Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani unveiled New York City’s $127 billion preliminary 2027 budget, warning of a $5.4 billion two-year gap thanks to chronic shortfalls and underfunded services. Savings drives and new tax revenue—buoyed by a $7.3 billion upward revision—help, but the rest may fall to property tax hikes and raiding reserves. Agencies, now with “Chief Savings Officers,” must pinch pennies—though millionaires might yet foot the bill, if Albany relents.

After a month-long freeze, the Gateway Tunnel project—promising a new $16 billion link under the Hudson between New York and New Jersey—will lurch back to life, the Gateway Development Commission announced, as $235 million in federal funds, briefly trapped in bureaucratic permafrost, were released by court order. One thousand workers return, snow permitting, but with $15 billion still outstanding, the end isn’t exactly whistling down the tracks just yet.

Congresswoman Grace Meng’s invitation to New York Deputy Mayor Helen Arteaga to attend the State of the Union highlights Democratic resistance to President Trump’s hefty $1 trillion Medicaid cut—“One Big Beautiful Bill Act”—which closed 100 rural hospitals and threatens hundreds of nursing homes. The address’s official theme is “America at 250: Strong, Prosperous and Respected”, though “robust” seems a stretch for U.S. health care—at least outside Congress’s marble halls.

In a sign that last year’s ballot reforms are nudging New York’s housing politics into the present, Councilmember Vickie Paladino reluctantly advanced a 248-unit Bayside project—unthinkable pre-reform—facing override by the new citywide appeals board. With “member deference” dethroned and YIMBYs quietly triumphant, even the recalcitrant learn to bargain; although, as Paladino notes, not all council hands are happily forced. The city’s NIMBYs may require updated business cards.

New York’s mayor, Zohran Mamdani, is floating a 9.5% property tax increase in his $127bn budget to chip away at the city’s deficit, but utility customers may feel it most sharply—since firms like Con Edison and National Grid tend to pass such costs along. With local taxes already several times above the national average, we wonder if solace can be found in the city’s well-lit skyscrapers.