By Maria Tsvetkova
NEW YORK, March 3 (Reuters) – New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani and state Governor Kathy Hochul appeared together on Tuesday to announce that 2,000 free childcare places will be offered to two-year-olds in the nation’s largest city starting later this year, a small first step toward fulfilling the new mayor’s ambitious campaign promise of free childcare for all.
The program, which the leaders said will grow next year to 12,000 free spots for an estimated 100,000 two-year-old New Yorkers, will not require the tax increases Mamdani sought and the governor opposed. He and Hochul did not address funding plans beyond next year.
Funding for the program called 2K – $73 million for the first year and $425 million for the second – will come from New York State, and is part of the $1.2 billion the state has committed to invest in free early childcare.
Hochul, asked by reporters about possible tax hikes to fund the program, said, “We can do it with existing revenues. Take what I’m saying as your answer.”
Mamdani did not address how the program would be paid for during the appearance, but said, “we’re making what Wall Street would call a good investment. Researchers estimate that every dollar spent on early childcare returns as much as $13.”
The expansion of universal childcare, along with a rent freeze and free buses, was central to Mamdani’s campaign. His first term began in January.
Funding concerns became an obstacle to cancelling bus fares. Asked about free buses last month, the mayor said that “it continues to be a budget conversation” as the city looks for replacement revenue for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the New York State-run network that operates public transit.
The prices for rent-stabilized apartments that Mamdani promised to freeze will be discussed later this year at a meeting of the Rent Guidelines Board in charge of establishing rent adjustments for the city’s roughly 1 million regulated units. Last month, Mamdani appointed a majority of the board’s members, including its chair.
The meeting on future rent rates has not yet been scheduled. In the previous year, the board held it in late June.
(Reporting by Maria Tsvetkova; editing by Donna Bryson and David Gaffen)
