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Janae Pierre: From WNYC, this is NYC NOW. I'm Janae Pierre. There's a fight happening in Albany. In one corner, it's Governor Kathy Hochul. In the other, it's New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. The two are clashing over state budget negotiations and whether to increase taxes on wealthy New Yorkers. On today's episode, we discuss how it's all playing out. First, here's what's happening in our region.

Mayor Mamdani's administration is moving to stop representing former Mayor Eric Adams in his ongoing sexual assault case. According to a new court filing, the city's corporation counsel, Steve Banks, wrote that Adams was not acting within the scope of his official duties when the alleged assault happened in 1993. The former mayor's accuser says they were both working at the NYPD when he forced himself on her. Adams says the encounter never happened. The lawsuit was filed under a state law that allowed alleged victims of sexual abuse to bring legal claims outside the statute of limitations.

The MTA is suing the Trump administration over its order to freeze federal funding for the Second Avenue Subway extension. The transit agency says they're owed nearly $60 million from the feds. Here's MTA Chair Janno Lieber explaining why the agency felt the need to sue.

Janno Lieber: The time has come for Second Avenue Subway to say federal government has to make good on its legal commitments in the grant agreement, which says you got to reimburse us when we put in the requisitions, and they continue to refuse to do so.

Janae Pierre: Under former President Joe Biden, the Federal Transportation Department signed off on a $3.4 billion grant for the project. It covers a little bit less than half the project's total cost. The work will extend the queue line north into East Harlem and will add three new stations. The Trump administration says it's considering all legal avenues.

Poverty rates are up again in New York City. About one in four residents lived in poverty in 2024. That's a slight increase from the year before. The data was compiled by the anti-poverty group Robin Hood and Columbia University. The groups say the most recent numbers are the highest since they began tracking data a decade ago. The report says nearly half a million children were living in poverty in 2024, and Asian and Latinos were twice as likely to experience poverty than white New Yorkers. Robin Hood says the numbers could get worse as the city prepares for two major federal safety programs to shrink: Medicaid and SNAP. That's a program that helps families afford groceries.

Still ahead, state lawmakers seem to be backing Mayor Mamdani's push to tax the rich, setting up a clash with Governor Hochul. That's coming up after a quick break.

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Janae Pierre: Welcome back. New York lawmakers in Albany are backing a key piece of Mayor Zohran Mamdani's agenda, raising income and business taxes on wealthy New Yorkers to bring billions more into New York City. That support is setting up a clash with Governor Kathy Hochul, who has repeatedly said that she doesn't want to raise income taxes. The fight is now playing out in the state budget negotiations. WNYC's Jon Campbell has been following it all, and he joins me now. Hey, Jon.

Jon Campbell: Hey, Janae.

Janae Pierre: Let's start with this proposal. What taxes are lawmakers looking to raise on wealthy residents and businesses?

Jon Campbell: Well, the big thing the Senate and the Assembly are looking to do is to hike taxes on the wealthy and on corporations. Their proposals vary slightly, but basically, they'd apply to anybody who makes at least $5 million a year, which--

Janae Pierre: I'm definitely not in that number, Jon.

Jon Campbell: Not me either. They also want to increase the corporate tax rate from 7.25% to 9%. Then there's a whole bunch of smaller tax proposals, too. For example, Janae, do you know what gold bullion is?

Janae Pierre: Gold bars or pure gold?

Jon Campbell: There you go. See, I didn't know what it was.

Janae Pierre: See, I'm almost rich, so I would know.

Jon Campbell: There you go. It's like gold bars and coins that investors buy. It's not jewelry, but it's like literally gold bars. In New York, they're not subject to sales tax, which is something that I didn't know.

Janae Pierre: I didn't know that either.

Jon Campbell: The Senate wants to change that. That change would bring in literally hundreds of millions of dollars a year. They also want to let New York City make a handful of changes to its tax rates. Lawmakers want to raise what's known as the city's mansion tax, for example. That would increase the rate for homes that sell for more than $5 million. The Senate wants to tax non-essential helicopter rides. These are the rides that have drawn the ire of a lot of Manhattanites for quite some time.

Some of these are big proposals, some of them are small, but when you add them up, we're talking about some really serious cash here. I mean, at least $4 billion on the state side, at least $2.5 billion on the city side. It's pretty serious stuff.

Janae Pierre: Yes. The city can definitely use that money. Jon, I'm curious, how closely does that match what Mayor Mamdani asked Albany to actually do?

Jon Campbell: Well, the answer is it's pretty similar, but it's not exactly the same. That corporate tax hike that we talked about, it's not quite as big as what Zohran Mamdani campaigned on. He wants to-- He, meaning the mayor, wants the wealth tax to apply to those making at least $1 million a year, not that $5 million like the lawmakers proposed. Still doesn't include me.

Janae Pierre: [chuckles]

Jon Campbell: Then there's that handful of other tax proposals from Mamdani's team that lawmakers are getting behind, like that one we just talked about for the gold bars. Not everything matches up exactly. Lawmakers are really getting behind what Mamdani really wants, which is to provide the city with billions of dollars to help fund his agenda of universal childcare, free buses, and also importantly, to close this big budget deficit that the city's facing, about $5.4 billion. Even though he doesn't exactly match up with the legislators here, he's on board. Here's what he said about the lawmakers' proposals on Friday.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani: Those are budgets that put forward $5 billion in commitments in a mixture of new revenue and change in the cost-sharing towards the city. That is the very kind of partnership that could put our city back on the firm financial footing that's required.

Jon Campbell: He's clearly aligning himself with lawmakers as they start negotiating with Governor Hochul on a final budget this month.

Janae Pierre: Yes, for sure. Jon, before we go any further, can you explain why this fight is happening in Albany? Why does New York City need the state's permission to raise certain taxes, like income taxes?

Jon Campbell: It does seem a little weird, right? I mean, New York City is huge, right? You wouldn't think it would have to go to Albany all the time for permission, but you can thank the New York State Constitution for that and how the court system has interpreted it over the years. That constitution says municipalities are in charge of their "property affairs and government." The way that's been interpreted by the courts over the years, I mean, the state has a ton of sway over all local governments throughout New York, not just New York City. That sets up a very state-heavy form of government. It means this city does have to get permission from the state to do all sorts of things.

Take mayoral control of the city's school system. That's something that Mike Bloomberg fought for, but he needed Albany approval to do it. It's something that Albany has to re-up every few years. It's even up for renewal this year. There's any number of things. Speed cameras or hiking the city's income tax or that mansion tax that we talked about, those are all things that get wrapped up in Albany. It's really a big reason why Mayor Mamdani has befriended Governor Hochul. Even if they don't see eye to eye on things like taxing the rich, he knows that she's got just huge sway over the city, and whether or not he can accomplish his agenda that he laid out in his mayoral campaign.

Janae Pierre: Lawmakers seem to be pretty open to this idea. Governor Hochul has been clear that she just doesn't want to raise income taxes. Why? Like, what is she saying? How big of a clash is this shaping up to be in the budget negotiations?

Jon Campbell: Well, Janae, it's a pretty big clash in the sense that you have one side wants one thing, and the other side doesn't want that one thing. The governor has said that, thanks to some better-than-expected revenues, Wall Street in particular is to thank for that, she believes the state has enough money to do what it needs to do. Here's what she said about that at an event hosted by the new site, Politico.

Governor Kathy Hochul: Wall Street businesses looking at Texas, they're not going there because they have a nicer governor. I know that for sure. They're going there because of the tax rate. We have to be smart about this. We can fund what we want to fund with what we already are taking in.

Janae Pierre: Wait, what does she mean here? What is it that they want to fund, Jon?

Jon Campbell: Well, they want to fund all sorts of things, including an expansion of childcare. That is a big thing where Mayor Mamdani and Governor Hochul see eye to eye. They have a shared goal of getting to universal childcare. It's also important to note here, too, that Governor Hochul hasn't explicitly ruled out a corporate tax hike the same way that she has ruled out an income tax hike. The same can be said for all sorts of those other tax increases, too, like getting rid of that tax credit for gold bars. There could be some room for compromise there.

While it is a clash in some sense, so far it hasn't really gotten nasty or personal. All of the players here are Democrats. We're talking the governor, Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, Senate Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, and they all have a fairly good working relationship at this point. Democrats dominate both houses of the legislature, but they aren't all from the left side of the spectrum. Both chambers do have a fair amount of moderates like Hochul. All that said, things can change pretty quickly, but at this point, it seems like the governor and the legislative leaders are pretty committed to reaching a compromise here.

Janae Pierre: Jon, as you and I both know, taxing the rich is something that Mayor Mamdani campaigned on, and he was indeed endorsed by Governor Kathy Hochul. Was she ever on board with this?

Jon Campbell: No, this is an area where they have never seen eye to eye. When they're asked about it, they talk about the need to work together and the need for the state and the city to kind of have a unified front, but that has not extended the issue of how to pay for it. The governor has been very, very steadfast in opposing income tax hikes. The mayor has been very, very steadfast in supporting them. At some point, it's unstoppable force, immovable object.

Janae Pierre: The mayor has warned that if Albany doesn't approve these taxes on wealthy New Yorkers, the city may have to actually raise property taxes instead. How real is that possibility?

Jon Campbell: Well, Janae, that kind of goes back to what we were talking about before with the state constitution. Remember how I said the Constitution lets municipalities deal with their property affairs and government? That means that the city is in charge of setting its own property taxes, and they keep that revenue. It's one of these relatively rare taxes that Mayor Mamdani and the City Council can set on their own without state approval. That said, though, everybody seems to hate the idea of raising property taxes. The City Council hates it, the governor hates it, state lawmakers hate it. We asked Speaker Heastie about it this week, and he basically said, "Listen, I get it. The mayor's hands are tied."

This is one tax the city can actually raise on its own. He's doing what he has to do. The speaker made clear he's not going to let it happen. He says he's committed to making sure the city and other cities across the state, like Buffalo, which is also in financial distress, he wants to make sure they're on solid financial ground in the state budget.

Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie: As I'm saying to you, I'm committed to making sure that the city and all of the cities around the state are on solid financial ground. That's what my commitment is.

Janae Pierre: Let's step back for a moment and talk about power dynamics here. I mean, who actually has the leverage in these negotiations? Is it the governor, the legislature, or the mayor? Also, Jon, like, what happens if they can't reach a deal?

Jon Campbell: Well, there's different levers that each of them can pull. Really, without a doubt, the governor has the most leverage here. She has the most sway over the language that actually gets into the budget. She can veto individual revenue lines if she wants, if it gets to that point. The mayor and lawmakers are banking on the power of public persuasion. I mean, tax hikes on the wealthy poll very, very well. On some level, that makes sense, right? I mean, the vast majority of people that are polled wouldn't be hit with those income tax hikes. Lawmakers, the mayor, they're hoping that the public pressure gets to be too much for Hochul and that she gets on board.

That said, she hasn't budged on this issue for more than four years, and she's running her reelection campaign on a message of affordability, and tax hikes probably would fly in the face of that. There's been no signs of any budging on her part so far this year. You know what happens if they deadlock? That means that that March 31st, April 1st budget deadline gets pushed back. They pass a short-term extension after short-term extension until they can reach some sort of compromise. In the past, we've seen that go to April, May, June. We could be in for a summer budget battle in Albany.

Janae Pierre: Oh, boy. That's not how I plan to spend my summer. I'm sure that's not how you plan to spend yours.

Jon Campbell: Not how I plan to, but my hands are kind of tied there.

Janae Pierre: Yes. That's WNYC's Jon Campbell. Thanks a lot, Jon.

Jon Campbell: Thanks, Janae.

Janae Pierre: Earlier this year, the NYPD reported a sharp spike in hate crimes across New York City. In January alone, the department counted dozens of incidents. That's a significant increase from the same time last year. Now the department says it's changing the way those crimes are reported to the public. Some hate crimes experts say the shift could make it harder to understand what's actually happening. WNYC and Gothamist reporter Ben Feuerhard has been looking into all of this. Hey, Ben.

Ben Feuerherd: Hey, how's it going?

Janae Pierre: Pretty good. Earlier this year, the NYPD reported a 152% spike in hate crimes. What exactly were they seeing in the data at that moment?

Ben Feuerherd: When the NYPD reported their crime figures for January, they provide a comparison to the figures for the same period last year, so January 2026 compared to January 2025. In January this year, they reported a pretty drastic jump in hate crimes compared to the same month last year. It was 152%, like you said. The department said there was a pretty drastic increase in anti-Jewish hate crimes, which they said accounted for more than half of all the hate crimes reported that month. Then numbers also jump in anti-Muslim hate crimes. There were seven reported in January this year compared to none, zero, the same period last year.

Janae Pierre: Okay, Ben, before we get into the reporting changes, I just want to get a better understanding of hate crimes. When we talk about hate crimes in New York City right now, what kinds of incidents are we seeing? What actually qualifies as a hate crime?

Ben Feuerherd: The NYPD puts out crime statistics every month. They publish them to the public, and they're usually framed sort of like a victory lap for the department because serious crime in New York tends to be at historic lows. Things like shootings, homicides. The department says they're doing a really good job at keeping those things under control. The figures also include data on hate crimes. In January, they noted there was a significant spike specifically in what they say are anti-Jewish hate crimes.

As for what qualifies a hate crime. The NYPD has what's called the Hate Crime Task Force, which are-- Essentially, it's a unit filled with NYPD detectives and officers who are trained to investigate potential hate crimes. The NYPD cites specific legal language about what constitute a hate crime in the city, in the state. Basically, it's a crime that is motivated in what they call a whole or substantial part by someone or something's identification with a group. What that means in practice is, like, if somebody was to target a synagogue or a church specifically because that building has an association with a religion, that could be a hate crime, certainly.

Janae Pierre: Okay. Ben, walk us through what is actually changing in the way these crimes will now be reported to the public.

Ben Feuerherd: Up until January, the NYPD released hate crime numbers to the public that included all hate crimes that were reported to them. What that means is they included potential hate crimes that the department said were still under review. Then, after this big spike in January, they changed that, and now they say they will only release hate crime figures based on those that have already been investigated and confirmed to be hate crimes. What that means in practice is the Hate Crimes Task Force is going to investigate all those reported hate crimes, and those confirmed by the task force are going to be what's in the figures that's publicly released by the department.

Janae Pierre: Okay. I guess I'm wondering here, like, why did the NYPD decide to change how it reports hate crimes in the first place? I mean, what problem were they trying to address with this?

Ben Feuerherd: The department, their position is that this shift is going to be a more accurate representation of the actual amount of hate crimes that are happening in the city. They see it as pretty straightforward. They say that hate crimes they can confirm to be hate crimes are the ones that should be counted in the crime figures, which is probably an explanation that a lot of people will see as valid.

Janae Pierre: You're saying that the NYPD is saying that it would be more accurate. I understand that you spoke with researchers who study hate crime data. Why do they worry that this change could make it harder for the public to track or even understand hate crimes?

Ben Feuerherd: One person I spoke to is this guy, Brendan Lantz, who runs a hate crime policy institute at Florida State University. He made the point that there's plenty of factors that can stand in the way of an actual hate crime being "confirmed by an agency like the NYPD." Meaning if, for example, a victim initially reports a hate crime and then in that investigative process becomes uncooperative with police or with other people doing the investigation, an actual hate crime that that person reported could go unconfirmed. Brendan used a really technical term for these factors that could stop a crime from being confirmed. He called it a filtration mechanism.

Brendan Lantz: The problem with that is that we know it's well documented hate crime literature that there are a lot of filtration mechanisms that essentially occur between when it's reported to, in this case, the NYPD as a potential hate crime and when it gets to the point where it's confirmed or founded as a hate crime. Not every single one of those filtration mechanisms is actually related to whether or not it's a true hate crime. My reaction would be that it's going to create a measurement problem where we are effectively under measuring them.

Ben Feuerherd: Lantz said, prior to this shift in reporting, he thought the NYPD was an agency that actually was transparent in reporting hate crimes and actually did a good job of it. He said it's his view that agencies that are good at reporting hate crimes, they tend to look like they have a lot of hate crimes happening in their jurisdictions.

Janae Pierre: Okay, Ben, so going forward, when New Yorkers see hate crime numbers from the NYPD, what should they keep in mind about how these figures are compiled?

Ben Feuerherd: Another expert I spoke to, Frank Pezzella at John Jay College, said that his biggest concern is that under this new reporting, it may look like there's going to be a big drop in hate crimes compared to the same period last year.

Frank Pezzella: If we look at the numbers that they report found to be a hate crime and compare them to the numbers that were previously reported that included those suspected to be a hate crime, obviously there's going to be a precipitous drop. It would be erroneous to consider that that's a drop in hate crimes.

Ben Feuerherd: Then, interestingly, everyone I spoke to didn't necessarily have a problem with the NYPD separating the data into the hate crimes that they have confirmed, but all of them said they wish that the department would publish both those reported and then those confirmed by the NYPD. They said that publishing both those figures adds a lot of context about what is happening in the city, and it may shed some light on how the NYPD investigates these crimes. To just strip that away was a big shift in the reporting process in the city.

Janae Pierre: You mentioned an increase in both anti-Muslim and anti-Jewish hate crimes. Can we just take a brief moment to talk about what's fueling this hate?

Ben Feuerherd: Yes. Everybody I spoke to basically said that the conflict in the Middle East is absolutely going to have an effect in the city and across the US. I guess to what extent that could drive hate crime may be disputed. One person I talked to, a Columbia professor, said that you're not going to see the number of hate crimes double because of the conflict in the Middle East. All three of the people I spoke to certainly said it's going to have an effect. Like what happens overseas has an effect on what's happening in the city.

Janae Pierre: Ben, do you listen to Stevie Wonder?

Ben Feuerherd: Not so much recently, but yes, I listened to Stevie Wonder in my youth.

Janae Pierre: I was just thinking we're talking about hate crimes, and Stevie has this song that I absolutely love, and it's called Love's in Need of Love Today. Can't help but think about it.

Ben Feuerherd: I'll go back and listen.

Janae Pierre: Yes. That's WNYC's Ben Feuerherd. Thanks a lot, Ben.

Ben Feuerherd: Thanks.

Janae Pierre: Before we go, we wanted to let you know that after our reporting, City Council Speaker Julie Menin questioned Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch about the change at a council hearing. Tisch defended the decision to change the reporting method. She said reporting hate crimes that are still under review made no sense and "was not a reflection of any reality." Thanks for listening to NYC NOW. I'm Janae Pierre. See you next time.

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