Dear New Yorkers,
If you looked only at economic indicators, you might not think anything is out of the ordinary.
NYC’s economy continued to expand at a moderate pace. The office market continued to heal. The city’s population seems to be on the rebound. Tax revenues are meeting our expectations, (fueled by a hefty increase in end-of-year bonuses, and a growing property tax roll).
The initial data on congestion pricing shows that the program is working as intended: travel times into and through the congestion zone are down, and transit usage is up. Cleaner air, less traffic, and funding for the subway system, a deal that everyone should be happy with.
Even the Mayor’s Preliminary Budget has all-too-familiar traits: implausibly low expenditure projections in key areas, exaggerated costs for asylum seekers, funding gaps for early childhood education, and no deposits in reserves.
Alas, those familiar indicators contrast harshly with the chaos unleashed by the Trump administration – and the echoes at City Hall. What we are seeing is worse than feared in our November and December reports: purges, mass layoffs, dismantling entire agencies, attacks on Congress and the courts, erratic tariff announcements, imperialist foreign policy – and ordering local prosecutors to do their bidding. All couched in cultural revolution-inspired rhetoric.
My office will continue to do everything in our power to protect New Yorkers. Earlier this week, we convened a roundtable with the NY Attorney General, City Council Speaker, Public Advocate, and the Partnership for NYC to discuss the economic impacts of mass deportation with business, labor, and community leaders. We published new data on the risks to Medicaid and the threat of funding freezes to human services providers.
This month’s Spotlight tells the same tale: We look at significant improvements in the number of “unbanked” households in New York over the past decade. One big reason: the work of the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Sadly, over the weekend, Trump ordered the CFPB – which has secured over $20 billion for American households since it was created – to send its employees home, close its doors, and cease nearly all activity.
We’ll keep watching the numbers – and what’s happening on the ground, too.
