Mayor blames state deficit in ‘cautious’ $95.3B budget preview
Mayor Bill de Blasio bemoaned the state’s projected $6 billion budget gap — New York’s largest since 2011 — during his annual preliminary budget press conference Thursday, presenting few new proposals for fear of lack of funds.
“After seven years doing this, this is the briefest presentation I’ve ever had to make because the situation is very straightforward and our focus is one place: Albany, New York,” de Blasio told reporters. “This is by far the largest state deficit we’ve ever confronted by a lot.”
The mayor’s $95.3 billion city budget proposal for the 2021 fiscal year, which his office is describing as “cautious” in light of a “new reality,” is $2.5 billion larger than the 2020 fiscal year budget. It will be parsed and analyzed for the next several months, ahead of a final budget agreement with the City Council expected in June.
In his State of the State address earlier this month, Governor Andrew Cuomo attributed $4 billion of the impending deficit to Medicaid. Mayor de Blasio said Thursday that he opposes any cuts to the program, which would primarily impact New York City’s low-income public hospital patients.