In the battle between democratic socialist New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and centrist New York Governor Kathy Hochul over whether to increase taxes on the state’s superrich, New Yorkers are firmly on the mayor’s side, with 62 percent approving of his plan. So are both houses of the state legislature. Much of the city council approves too, with twenty-two members calling on the governor to give the city the power to increase taxes on millionaires by 2 percent.

One important New York City political power player opposes taxing the rich though: Julie Menin, the oligarchic Speaker of the New York City Council. The Speaker doesn’t have as much power as the mayor or the governor, but Menin is playing an important and insidious role in setting the terms of debate on this issue.

The city’s ruling class breathed a sigh of relief when Menin gathered the support to become city council Speaker in November, just after Mamdani’s election as mayor. That’s in part because she’s part of the superrich class herself. Menin’s husband, Bruce Menin, is a partner and cofounder of Crescent Heights, a privately held real estate development company with a nationwide portfolio, and the couple lives in an Upper East Side apartment valued somewhere around $5–9.5 million. She’s not just another politician with an opinion — she’s a class warrior for her fellow plutocrats, publicly leading the resistance against the mildest sign of redistribution from inside city government and, unfortunately, informing the governor’s thinking.

At stake in New York City’s budget negotiations is the survival of Mamdani’s wildly popular agenda as well as the ability of millions of New Yorkers to thrive. These negotiations are currently underway at two different levels of government: the city and the state.

At the state level, both houses of the legislature agree that with a $5.4 billion budget gap in the city, horrific cuts from the federal government to food stamps and health care, and the overwhelming public approval of Mamdani’s affordability agenda, it’s time to increase taxes on the superrich — who, after all, just got a massive tax cut at the federal level from Donald Trump. The governor has been an enthusiastic partner to the mayor on universal childcare. But Hochul — whose campaign donors include more than a few members of the Epstein class — has repeatedly rejected the idea of taxing the superrich to pay for it.

At the city level, hearings and negotiations over the existing budget are currently underway, and Speaker Menin’s comments have not been good. She has repeatedly made the case that there is so much waste to cut in the city’s spending that there should be no need to tax the rich or even dip into the city’s rainy day fund. Menin repeatedly says in interviews that there are “savings” to be found in the budget. Another euphemism Menin and her team use is “right-sizing the budget” (by which they obviously mean make it smaller).

Her estimates of how much “savings” can be found are wildly exaggerated by counting some items twice, Politico reported. And Menin takes the governor’s refusal to tax the rich at face value — “Look, the governor has said she’s not raising taxes,” she recently stated — as a natural phenomenon rather than a malleable political condition.

There are resolutions from the progressive councilmembers calling upon the state to tax the rich, but Menin has not supported them. Although Menin has said there will be no cuts to services — probably a sign of how successfully the popular mayor has shifted the common sense of this debate — she is firmly siding with the governor by continually insisting that taxing the rich is off the table.

While Menin says there should be no cuts to services, her insistence on funding those services solely through savings is either unrealistic or a route to a particularly insidious and brutal form of cost-cutting. Eric Adams’s previous administration “saved” money by simply leaving vacancies in the city workforce unfilled. That approach leaves city agencies understaffed and means that nothing works well and services aren’t provided.

This may be what Menin intends. She doesn’t want to tax rich households like her own but also doesn’t want to be held responsible for an unpopular regime of austerity; hence her dishonest rhetoric about “savings.” Mamdani has warned that this approach of leaving vacancies unfilled could lead to fewer teachers and nurses, delayed housing inspections, and overburdened, underfunded city offices failing to serve New Yorkers.

The ruling class of the city understands that Menin is on its side and has been praising her. Steve Fulop, the head of the New York City Partnership, the leading voice of the city’s business interests, said recently on Republican grocery magnate John Catsimatidis’s radio show, referring to Menin’s refusal to embrace the politics of taxing the rich, “The Speaker has been great.”

Although the city council has no power to raise taxes, the Speaker’s position matters because the governor is clearly watching how city politics play out. In fact, Hochul has even said that she is not making any decisions until she sees what city council is going to do. As Hochul continues to field pressure from voters and colleagues on this issue, Menin’s insistence that taxing the rich isn’t necessary gives cover to the governor to continue refusing to do so.

Mamdani’s affordability agenda is popular; taxing the superrich is by far the most popular way to fund it. While other revenue options the administration has floated, like raising property taxes and expanding paid parking in the city, are worth debating, they skirt the necessary head-on fight against the class that can afford it most: the ultrarich.

This is especially true now, with the emergence of a truly parasitical billionaire class. According to Oxfam, just twelve men owned half of humanity’s wealth in 2025. More billionaires live in New York City than anywhere else on Earth, and they’re doing better than ever. And in case you haven’t noticed, the ruling class has grown increasingly disgusting, decadent, utterly unconcerned about the common good, and scornful of democracy.

Americans in general and New Yorkers in particular want to express their disgust with the oligarchs. Governor Hochul should get on board with taxing them, and Speaker Menin should get out of the way.