NYC mayoral candidates answer questions on taxes, affordability, spending
The Brief
The Citizens Budget Commission sent out a questionnaire to the New York City mayoral candidates.
Nine of the candidates responded, answering questions regarding government efficiency, taxes and other topics.
NEW YORK CITY - The Citizens Budget Commission's (CBC) new questionnaire sheds some light on the potential future spending habits of New York City's mayoral candidates.
All answers provided by the candidates were taken from their responses to the CBC's 2025 New York City Mayoral Candidate Questionnaire.
What we know
SKIP TO: Services and operations | Education | Attracting residents and businesses | Taxes
Twelve candidates were sent the questionnaire – only New York City Mayor Eric Adams, City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams and Senator Zellnor Myrie did not submit responses. The other candidates are as follows:
Former Assemblymember Michael Blake
Former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo
New York City Comptroller Brad Lander
Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani
Senator Jessica Ramos (who just recently endorsed Cuomo)
Curtis Sliwa
Former New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer
Whitney Tilson
Jim Walden
A more comprehensive look at each candidate can be found here.
What they're saying
Here are some of the subjects broached by the questionnaire.
A majority of the candidates rated the efficiency of NYC's services and operations from fair to poor, with only Jim Walden rating the efficiency as "good" – Mamdani, Sliwa and Tilson were the three to rate the services and operations as "poor."
In comparison, none of the candidates rates the quality of these services as "poor," with Stringer and Blake going so far as to label them "good" (the other candidates all settled on "fair").
"If you can't afford rent, find a good school or feel safe walking home, you're not staying in New York City." Senator Jessica Ramos
The variation of answers was far greater when the candidates were asked which two major agencies offer significant opportunity to improve said efficiency.
Blake and Ramos highlighted NYCHA (NYC Housing Authority) as one of their two chosen agencies; Blake, Mamdani and Sliwa pointed to education.
While on the subject of education, only one candidate argued against the concept that increasing public school per-student spending would increase achievement: Curtis Sliwa.
"Results come from better leadership, not blank checks."
Tilson did not commit to a yes or no answer: "Higher per-pupil spending generally does not increase achievement, but I want to invest in certain areas, such as expanding 3-K and reading tutors in elementary schools, for struggling children."
All seven other candidates agreed with the idea that an increase in per-student spending would lead to higher achievement rates.
Every candidate who participated in the questionnaire agreed that public safety and housing affordability were the two most pressing issues regarding attracting new residents and businesses.
"New Yorkers with children under the age of six are leaving the city at more than twice the rate of those without young children." Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani
When asked to choose a third factor, the candidates began to diverge in perspective. Lander, Ramos, Stringer, Tilson and Walden concurred that the city's quality of education offered is an obstacle to attracting newcomers.
Sliwa cited high taxes as his suspected issue, while Mamdani zeroed in on childcare, or more accurately, a lack of affordable childcare options.
Cuomo and Blake settled on similar matters, with Blake attributing the issue to the cost of living overall, while Cuomo pointed to "quality of life write large" as the issue.
All candidates involved said they would keep the city's sales tax as it is currently – answers diverged in regard to personal income taxes and property taxes.
Ramos and Mamdani would increase the personal income tax of New Yorkers, while Cuomo and Sliwa would decrease them, with the other candidates saying they would keep them the same.
Walden, Cuomo and Sliwa would decrease the property tax rate, while Blake would increase it – most other candidates would keep the rate as it is now, except for Ramos, who did not provide an answer.
The Source
This article includes information from a Citizens Budget Commission questionnaire.
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Yahoo
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Mamdani ahead of Cuomo in ranked choice voting: NYC mayoral poll
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Politico
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NYC mayoral primary: 1 day to go
Presented by With help from Cris Seda Chabrier NEW YORK MINUTE: An Emerson College poll out today shows Zohran Mamdani defeating Andrew Cuomo by nearly 4 points in the eighth round of voting — a rare public survey that doesn't demonstrate the former governor in the lead of a race he's as-yet dominated. The survey finds Cuomo ahead in the first round of ranked-choice voting 36.4 to Mamdani's 33.7, with undecided voters excluded, and the state assemblymember winning the final round 51.8 to 48.2. (That split is akin to a head-to-head poll commissioned by city comptroller candidate Justin Brannan earlier this month. Since then, 384,338 New Yorkers have headed to the polls to vote ahead of Tuesday's Democratic primary.) Emerson partnered with with PIX and The Hill to survey 800 voters; the poll has a 3.4 percent margin of error. It also shows city Comptroller Brad Lander's 20.1 percent favors Mamdani when Lander is eliminated in the seventh round. 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Cuomo attacked too, brushing off Lander as irrelevant, while holding a press conference harping on Mamdani's 'defund the police' tweets from 2020 and accusing the democratic socialist of 'hate speech.' Mamdani's decade-plus of pro-Palestinian advocacy against Israel is another one of Cuomo's closing arguments against him, while some supporters say they're motivated by his principled stance. POLITICO's Jason Beeferman reported Sunday on what Mamdani has actually said about Israel. Voting closes at 9 p.m. tomorrow, but the mayoral race is far from over. Stay tuned. — Jeff Coltin and Amira McKee HAPPY MONDAY: Got news? Send it our way: Jeff Coltin, Emily Ngo and Nick Reisman. WHERE'S KATHY? In Erie County, Niagara County, Monroe County, Onondaga County, and New York City, making an energy announcement at Niagara Power Project. WHERE'S ERIC? In New York City, making a public safety-related announcement with District Attorney Clark. 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Business groups can claim wins too, including a budget provision that will pay down more than $6 billion in unemployment insurance debt and the approval of tax credits meant to spur New York City business expansion. Still, Democrats acknowledge there's more to be done. 'There were some meaningful steps forward, especially on universal school meals, but there were missed opportunities,' Democratic state Sen. James Skoufis told Playbook. 'The biggest cost of living pressures remain housing, utilities and property taxes — and these are issues that continue to require major overhaul.' Convincing voters that Democrats — even in deep blue New York — care about the cost of living will be crucial for the party ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. Policies approved in Albany, like the controversial cashless bail law, often become factors in House races. And New York is home to several battleground seats that could determine control of the chamber. 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Politico
2 hours ago
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Cuomo's management of the MTA was fraught — and offers a look into how he would lead NYC
NEW YORK — One of Andrew Cuomo's testiest exchanges with a campaign rival offered a revealing look into how the former governor ran the nation's largest transit system. During the final debate in the Democratic primary for New York City mayor, Brad Lander claimed that, as governor, Cuomo had 'screwed' and 'cheated' immigrant workers who washed subways during the pandemic. In batting down the allegation, Cuomo reminded New Yorkers that sometimes he acknowledges he's a micromanager — and sometimes he doesn't. 'They should never have hired illegal immigrants — if it is true,' Cuomo said of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. 'But obviously I had nothing to do with them hiring anyone.' Lander balked at Cuomo's use of the term 'illegal immigrants' and fired back, saying the orders for the cleaning service 'came from on high.' 'Oh, I see,' Cuomo said. 'So every contract that the MTA contracts, you want me to be held responsible? Come on.' The idea for the cleaning was something Cuomo announced in late April 2020, prompting an unprecedented overnight closure of the subway system. And for anyone familiar with his reputation as a micromanager, it's not a stretch to think Cuomo could actually be responsible for the contract. After all, as governor, Cuomo involved himself in rethinking how to repair the tunnel that carries the L train, picking the color of subway tiles and pressing the MTA to spend a quarter billion dollars to decorate a bridge with colorful, pulsating lights. At other times, though, Cuomo has claimed the MTA wasn't his thing. 'I have representation on the board,' the then-governor said in 2017, downplaying his role. 'The city of New York has representation on the board, so does Nassau, Suffolk, Dutchess, Putnam, Rockland, other counties, OK?' His rivals aren't buying it. According to them, the former governor's rollercoaster leadership of the MTA informs how he would helm the country's biggest city. Lander, Zohran Mamdani and the alliance of progressives seeking to block Cuomo from winning the Democratic primary have tried to capitalize on every perceived weakness, from his treatment of women who accused him of sexual harassment to the nursing home Covid-19 deaths during his tenure. Cuomo has denied wrongdoing. Some of his MTA controversies — especially his redirecting of transit funds to struggling state-run ski resorts and his mixed messaging about who runs the agency — have been part of the battery of campaign attacks against him. 'The first thing that New Yorkers deserve out of a leader is an acknowledgment of their own responsibilities,' Mamdani, the state assemblymember eating into Cuomo's lead, told POLITICO on Saturday. 'There were years where he tried to tell New Yorkers that the MTA was actually under the auspices of Bill de Blasio, and what we need is someone who owns up to the scale of the crisis at hand.' Cuomo campaign spokesperson Rich Azzopardi responded by ticking off the former governor's list of accomplishments. 'Governor Cuomo increased MTA operating funding by $2 billion a year, passed the largest capital plan in history, increasing it 125 percent to $54.8 billion, and he proudly finished the Second Avenue Subway and Moynihan Train Station — two projects generations of politicians talked about but didn't have the slightest clue how to actually build,' Azzopardi said. He pointed to the L train tunnel project and the East Side Access project, which connected the Long Island Rail Road to a newly opened Grand Central Madison terminal. 'The advocates and the far left didn't support that nor did they support hiring 500 MTA police to combat subway crime — history has borne out both those decisions,' Azzopardi added. That isn't nearly all there is to Cuomo's track record when it comes to the MTA, though. To understand Cuomo's role with the MTA, it's important to know who's actually in charge. The agency's board has a complex balance of power, with the New York City mayor, suburban county executives and state Senate having some say over its voting members. The governor, though, controls the nominating process, has more board representatives than anyone in the state and picks its chair and CEO. Early in his administration, Cuomo was so notorious for keeping his distance from the agency's problems that John Raskin, the former head of the Riders Alliance, made it his mission to get straphangers to understand the power Albany had over their commutes. In the summer of 2015, the group took a cardboard cutout of Cuomo on a tour of the subway system to make its case. That hands-off approach made Cuomo's exchange with Lander all the more galling to the transit advocacy group. 'He's still running away from the major responsibility he had to New York City as governor,' said current Riders Alliance spokesperson Danny Pearlstein. At City Hall, Cuomo would have far less power over the MTA than he did as governor, but as governor, in one of many clashes with Mayor de Blasio, he called it the 'city subway system.' 'As governor, he defunded and badly weakened the subway system and caused the summer of hell,' Lander said Saturday as he campaigned outside an Upper West Side subway station. The so-called summer of hell was an infamous series of transit problems in 2017 that began with Amtrak's Penn Station but also included MTA infrastructure breakdowns that left its customers suffering from the worst on-time performance of any major rapid transit system in the world. As that hell was beginning, Cuomo said his responsibility for the MTA merely consisted of appointing a few people to its board. But during his tenure, he also exerted control. In 2016, he was publicly reported to be 'hands on' and fretting about details like circuits that were complicating work on the Second Avenue subway. In early 2019, he was hailed for avoiding a shutdown of the L subway line. By the time a new subway boss, Andy Byford, arrived at the agency in 2018, Cuomo was 'sinking his hands deeper every day,' according to the late New York Times reporter Jim Dwyer, a legendary observer of the subway system. By spring 2019, another local news outlet had enough fodder to compile a list of Cuomo's 'greatest MTA micro-managing hits.' Out on the campaign trail, Cuomo has pointed to an unsafe subway system as one of the reasons he's running. In the speech launching his bid, he talked about an era when 'government worked and the subways were safe. But today people stand with their backs against the walls, away from the tracks and away from each other, wary, on guard, afraid they might be the next victim, afraid of New York at its worst.' Cuomo has run his campaign for mayor on a platform of experience and competence, including his three terms as governor, as New York attorney general and as U.S. secretary of Housing and Urban Development. 'The mayor of the city of New York — we have to understand that that is basically a management job,' the former governor told a Brooklyn megachurch Sunday. His opponents contend that's the point and have mocked him for precisely that when it comes to the MTA. Mamdani submitted bids for equipment once purchased to fulfill Cuomo's dreams of a choreographed, colored light show on the MTA's bridges, and he criticized the multimillion-dollar check Cuomo's administration once had the MTA cut to bail out upstate ski resorts. Homelessness in the subway, by Cuomo's own account, worsened during his and de Blasio's tenures: In 2019 — more than eight years after he took office — Cuomo said the homeless problem in the train system was 'worse than ever.' The pandemic accelerated that. Because of lost ridership during the pandemic, the MTA was facing the worst financial crisis in its history when Cuomo resigned in August 2021 following the sexual harassment allegations. There was turmoil at the top, too, after Cuomo's repeated spats with MTA leaders, including Byford, who resigned amid feuds with Cuomo. Before stepping down in 2021, Cuomo attempted to change how the agency was run by proposing a leadership structure that would give him even more say, echoing a move his father had tried four decades earlier. None of this appears to be forgotten under Gov. Kathy Hochul. During her time in office, there have been occasional indirect shots at how things once were under her predecessor. MTA CEO Janno Lieber recently thanked Hochul and state lawmakers for signing off on a budget deal that helps fund a $68 billion multi-year capital plan, the largest in the agency's history, but one focused primarily on repair work. Lieber said the deal acknowledges that the MTA needs money for repairs and isn't 'some weird bailout' to invest in essential infrastructure. 'We're not waving around a ton of shiny baubles,' he said. 'We love new projects — no secret they have helped to transform and grow the system — but we must maintain, we must preserve this system.' After leaving office, Cuomo changed his position on at least one important MTA-related policy: the congestion pricing tolls he signed into law to fund subway upgrades. Last year, as he was pondering his political future, he and his former aides criticized Hochul's handling of congestion pricing — first for embracing it, then for temporarily tanking it. With the midterm elections looming and Republicans critical of the policy, Cuomo questioned in March 2024 whether 'now is the right time to enact' the tolls; that June a top adviser criticized Hochul for pausing the program before it went into effect. For his transit critics, Cuomo did everything wrong, except for congestion pricing; while Hochul did everything right for the MTA, except for the five-month period where she paused congestion pricing. Now, Hochul is one of the program's biggest champions, in part because it's shown she can stand up to President Donald Trump, who has opposed the toll. Hochul has shown a willingness to take ownership of issues plaguing the MTA. She pushed plans to redevelop Penn Station, struck a funding deal with New Jersey on new train tunnels under the Hudson River, advanced plans for a new transit line between Brooklyn and Queens and agreed to fund increased police patrols in the subway system amid a major crime spike. Within months of winning a full term, she had filled the MTA's budget gap. And she hasn't burned through MTA leaders, instead having remarkable stability after years of tumult. Even when congestion pricing went off the rails, she and Lieber stood together. If Cuomo wins the primary and goes on to be elected mayor, advocates who did battle with him over his MTA management are bracing for the worst and hoping for the best. 'The hope is that Cuomo grew a lot as a person and manager and can actually delegate because, if he can't, then the city is going to be dysfunctional in a different way than it was under Eric Adams,' said John Kaehny, executive director of the government accountability group Reinvent Albany. 'But if the MTA is your only basis of comparison, then it bodes very poorly for the city.' Jeff Coltin contributed to this report.
