How Does State and Local Law Impact Mayor Mamdani’s Policy Agenda?

In November 2025’s stunning mayoral election, New York City voters came out in droves to elect surprise breakaway candidate Zohran Mamdani as their new mayor, buoyed by his campaign promises of free childcare and free city buses and an affordable life of dignity for all New Yorkers. But now that his administration is up and running, can Mamdani overcome the fiscal hurdles and local power limitations to make good on these promises?

New York City doubles as the “capital of the world,” and when Mamdani assumed the role of mayor of New York City — a unique, dense, and incredibly generative place — he took on one of the world’s most powerful jobs. Mamdani now leads a city that has a population of almost nine million, an annual budget of over $100 billion, a workforce of nearly 350,000 employees, and a gross domestic product larger than that of most mid-size countries.

Yet despite this cultural, economic, and political heft, New York City is still a city. As a non-sovereign political subdivision of the state of New York, New York City holds only those powers of self-governance that the state has chosen to delegate to it.

Compared to other states, New York State has endowed its municipalities with relatively robust powers of home rule and self-governance “to regulate the quality of life in communities and to provide direct services to the people.” In fact, the delegated local self-governance powers in New York fall “among the most far-reaching in the nation.” Article IX of the New York Constitution confers significant powers of self-determination to local governments, and the statutory Municipal Home Rule Law supplements these powers.

With these extensive home rule powers, New York City can (through its city council) make the policy decision to extend the popular universal pre-K and 3K programs to an even younger cohort and offer free childcare for two-year-olds — a Mamdani campaign promise set to launch this coming fall. But because of its city status, New York City has limited options for actually funding this proposed “2-Care” program. Despite Mamdani’s assertions that he would fund the 2-Care program by raising the income taxes on high-earning New York City residents and the corporate taxes on city businesses, one of the powers that municipalities in New York state don’t receive is the power to raise these taxes past a state-imposed ceiling. In fact, as one law review article memorably put it, New York City “can’t even raise dog licensing fees without state approval.”

Indeed, New York City stands among only a small handful of cities across the nation that have been granted the authority (by the state) to collect income tax at all. But to increase it past the state-set ceiling, the city would have to get state approval, and the state has shown no appetite to loosen the strings in this regard.

According to one estimate, the 2-Care program will cost approximately one billion dollars each year. To fund the program, then, New York City must either squeeze out a billion dollars through its normal budget allocation process, or find an alternative, allowable revenue source.

Luckily, the state has stepped in to offer funding. As part of its 2026 State of the State agenda, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced that the state of New York would pay the costs of 2-Care for its first two years. Hochul has also publicly committed to “provide the necessary funding” for the program after that initial period. Without this state financial support, and without the means to increase either income taxes or corporate taxes, it is unclear where the extra billion dollars a year needed for the program would have come from.

For the campaign promise of free city buses, the mayor faces a significant hurdle even before addressing the question of funding: New York City does not actually hold the power to set transit fare prices. That ability rests instead with a state-created public authority: the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. As “North America’s largest transportation network, serving a population of 15.3 million people across a 5,000-square-mile travel area surrounding New York City, Long Island, southeastern New York State, and Connecticut,” a 23-member board governs the transit authority. The New York City mayor chooses only four of those members.

And money matters here, too. If Mamdani were able to show free buses would have no or minimal financial impact, convincing the MTA board and others of the merits of a free fare bus system would be much easier. Transit authorities are notoriously financially embattled, and the present moment has perhaps exacerbated this even further: Ridership and its attendant revenues have remained depressed since Covid-19, and federal funding is evaporating. Even in this low ridership moment, though, bus fares contribute an estimated $600 million annually and convincing the MTA to forego that revenue will be difficult. Additionally, obligations to existing bondholders further complicate this issue, as fare revenue has been pledged to pay for these bonds, and even replacing this revenue with other sources of funding might impact the MTA’s credit rating. Creative proposals to recoup the revenue from other sources have been floated, including imposing fees for street parking in the city, and the state legislature currently appears potentially amenable to at least test a free bus pilot program. But recent comments from the Metropolitan Transit Authority suggest that it is in fact moving in the opposite direction of free buses — towards increased fares and enforcement thereof.

New York City mayors have faced seemingly impossible challenges before. When then-Mayor Bill De Blasio first attempted to set up a universal pre-K program in the city, many believed it could not be done. Yet that program was not only put in place but thrived and expanded. Mamdani’s supporters hope to see similar success, and if his precedent-setting, record-breaking rise to political power is any indication, he may yet overcome these fiscal and power allocation hurdles to deliver on these promises.

Sarah L. Swan is a professor of law and Dean’s Civil Governance Scholar at Rutgers Law School.

Suggested Citation: Sarah Swan, How Does State and Local Law Impact Mayor Mamdani’s Policy Agenda?, Sᴛᴀᴛᴇ Cᴏᴜʀᴛ Rᴇᴘᴏʀᴛ (Mar. 23, 2026), https://statecourtreport.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/how-does-state-and-local-law-impact-mayor-mamdanis-policy-agenda