Gov. Kathy Hochul backtracked and admitted she is having conversations with Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s team about his socialist freebie bus plan — despite initially slamming the brakes on it.
Hochul said it was too early to divulge any details on a potential deal or compromise, but confessed to Politico she was currently in talks regarding Mamdani’s $700 million call for free city buses.
“We’re having conversations with his team, I will say that,” Hochul said when asked about his campaign promise.
“We have a lot of alignment on the overall, overarching objective. When it comes to individual proposals, whether it’s child care — we’ve had conversations about what a rollout of that could look like,” she added.
“Same thing with buses. What’s the overall objective here? Is it to make it more affordable for people that are struggling? That’s something I understand.”
The remarks are an about-face from earlier this month when Hochul argued she’d already put vast sums of money into a cash-strapped MTA for major projects.
“We’re spending a lot of money, so I cannot set forth a plan right now that takes money out of a system that relies on the fares of the buses and the subways,” she said at the SOMOS political retreat in Puerto Rico on Nov. 8.
“But can we find a path to make it more affordable for people who need help? Of course we can.”
Still, her decision not to completely slam the door on Mamdani’s plan came even though she admitted the only way to follow through was to hike taxes.
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Asked if she would have to raise taxes, Hochul told Politico: “Well, certainly statewide, to have all free buses, that’d be impossible.”
“Let’s just figure out how we can take bites at the problem and start solving that.”
“I can’t do anything just for the city,” the governor continued. “So a city wants to do something, they want to do pilots, they want to do certain things, we can have the conversations with them, but policies overall happen statewide.”
It comes after Hochul, who is up for re-election in 2026, vowed not to hit high-earners with higher taxes to help fund Mamdani’s campaign promises – but was said to be having preliminary conversations about raising revenue by upping the corporate tax rate.
The hike would help fill the more than $4 billion budget gap facing the state next year and cover some of the costs associated with Mamdani’s socialist dream for the Big Apple once he becomes mayor.
