The largest share — about $2.3 billion over two years — is expected to come from the city’s delaying certain pension payments, a change that requires state approval and buy-in from municipal unions.

...

To balance this year’s budget, Mr. Mamdani is proposing to delay payments into New York City’s pension funds.

The city has five pension funds representing teachers, police officers, firefighters and other unionized municipal workers. The returns, which are invested, total about $300 billion.

The mayor’s plan, which would save $2.3 billion through the end of the upcoming fiscal year, would involve restructuring the city’s contributions to the funds following an overhaul instituted in 2013 by Bill de Blasio, then the mayor of New York City, and Andrew M. Cuomo, then the governor. At that time, the mayor changed the city’s pension payment obligations following a drop in the assumed rate of return, to 7 percent from 8 percent.

(and fucking, of course: "Police officers’ pensions would be unaffected by the proposed change, as their union, the Police Benevolent Association, is opposed to the plan.")

https://archive.ph/XARnw (NY Times)

So, it sounds like the biggest contribution to the balanced budget is to push problems down the road and delay funding pensions. To a certain extent I get it. He was left with a time bomb that was about to go off, and if he can balance the budget (even if it's by delaying pension payments) he can defuse that time bomb and get some breathing room. I would hope that the unions accept the pension delay because I think having him as mayor is going to pay off for them in the long term.

It's clear that this budget isn't really balanced, at least not long term. It sounds like he's still going to have to make some hard decisions, either cutting benefits or raising revenues. It sounds like one item that needs addressing is the cost per student in NYC which is twice as high as other places. That's going to involve making some hard decisions and taking on some powerful special interests.

And of course, if he can actually fix NYC's biggest problem (the NYPD) he'll go a long way to solving the other probems.