Welcome back to the Ten Blocks Podcast.

This is Brian Anderson.

I'm the editor of City Journal.

Joining me on the program today is a frequent guest, Nicole Jelinez. She's a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a longtime contributing editor of City Journal, and a columnist for, or a regular contributor to the New York Times.

She writes often on urban economics, infrastructure,

finance, and really has covered the city about as well as anybody over the last years.

Her work has appeared in Wall Street Journal, L.A. Times, and many other publications.

She's also the author of the award-winning 202424 book, Movement, New York's Long War,

to take back its streets from the car.

Today, though, I want to talk about a topic she's been covering extensively for City Journal,

New York's new mayor, Zoran Mamdani, and his performance as he has completed the first two months in office.

So Nicole, thanks very much for joining us, as always, on 10 blocks.

Good morning, Ryan.

Thank you for having me on again.

So the mayor has recently proposed to raise property taxes on all property owners in the city in order to fund the city's

budget gap, which he calls the Adams budget crisis, referring to his predecessor, Eric Adams,

and to cover the cost of his proposed programs. So this, this shift in tone is significant. It's a shift away from

the optimistic focus on alleviating the cost of living difficulties of everyday New Yorkers.

I wonder, in your view, is the city's budget situation really a crisis, as he says,

or is this more about just trying to get the state government to approve his need for money

and his proposed taxes on high earners and large corporations?

Yeah, it's a little bit of a bait and switch as you intimate from the campaign.

...