Chamber statement on Mayor Mamdani’s Preliminary Budget Plan, proposal for property tax increases

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Date: February 17, 2026

Chamber to Mayor: You Cannot Build a Stable City on Unstable Math

NEW YORK, NY — Jessica Walker, President and CEO of the Manhattan Chamber of Commerce, issued the following statement on Mayor Mamdani's Preliminary Budget Proposal:

"We want this Mayor to succeed. A thriving New York City is good for every business, every worker, and every family in this borough. That is precisely why we cannot stay silent about what we are seeing in this budget.

The administration is proposing to grow city spending by $5 billion in a single year — bringing the FY2027 budget to $127 billion, a figure larger than the municipal budgets of Chicago, Los Angeles, and Houston combined. This comes on top of a nearly $20 billion expansion under the prior administration. At some point, the compounding has to stop. That point is now.

New York does not have a revenue problem. It has a spending velocity problem. And this budget accelerates it.

We are equally concerned about what is being proposed to close the gap. 'Property tax reform' sounds reasonable until you understand how commercial leases actually work. The vast majority contain triple-net or tax escalation clauses,  which means any increase in commercial property taxes flows directly to tenants. This is not a burden on wealthy developers. It is a surcharge on the small business owner who signed a lease in good faith and has no ability to renegotiate it. That is not reform. That is cost-shifting.

We welcome the appointment of City Savings Officers, and we genuinely mean that. We also welcome Governor Hochul's commitment of $1.5 billion in additional state aid. These are meaningful developments. But they only matter if the administration uses them as intended: to create space for real efficiency, not as cover to keep the larger spending structure intact.

On reserves: we are relieved the drawdown has been moved to a contingency scenario. We urge the administration to remove it from the table entirely. Using a savings account to pay recurring bills is not a fiscal strategy. It is a deferred reckoning — and New York has been down that road before.

The Chamber is not here to obstruct. We are here to be honest. The City Council has a responsibility to scrutinize this budget with rigor, and we will be at that table with data, with alternatives, and with a clear-eyed view of what New York's economy can actually sustain.

The small businesses of Manhattan are resilient. They have survived a pandemic, an inflation surge, tariffs, and years of uncertainty. What they cannot survive is a government that treats them as a revenue line rather than a civic foundation. We can do better than this budget. We must."