Mayor Zohran Mamdani delivers remarks about the fiscal year 2027 budget at City Hall on May 12, 2026. Anadolu via Getty Images Mayor Mamdani spiked the ball Tuesday, as the city’s budget crunch seemed to go away as quickly as it had appeared. He announced that Gov. Kathy Hochul and state lawmakers would dallop a few extra billion dollars on Gotham over the next few years to patch up the city’s suddenly balanced budget. But the mayor’s revisionism, coupled with the slipshod manner in which the budget is being balanced, gives reason to worry that he will struggle to handle less avoidable fiscal challenges ahead. The mayor insists he “uncovered” a massive budget deficit upon taking office, a strange term to describe something that had been warned about for the better part of a year, including by state comptroller Tom DiNapoli. New York City is now in its fourth year of spending more than it collects, and spending has far outpaced inflation for a decade.…