In politics, everyone wants to talk about spending money; no one wants to talk about saving it. Why? Because saving money is not sexy to most people. After all, what’s so great about government stashing money away in a piggy bank when they could be using it for all sorts of things like free buses, tax refunds, or building big things?
Yet saving money is essential to our individual bank accounts as it is to good government. The primary reason to save, for most families, can be boiled down to answering a simple question: “What if?” What if you need to move from your apartment? What if the stove or refrigerator broke down? What if someone we love got sick and needed extensive healthcare?
Most of the “What if?” moments in our lives turn out to be setbacks, and the savings we have can help us get through those difficult times. When those savings are not there, we sacrifice and make difficult decisions that only exacerbate whatever problems we face.
In much the same way, City Hall — which spends so much of our money, and saves far too little of it today — needs to do more to build up its reserves.
On Wednesday, Mayor Zohran Mamdani and City Comptroller Mark Levine announced a proposed charter amendment to establish new regulations and requirements for what’s known as the Reserve Stabilization Fund, which we colloquially call the “rainy day fund.” The amendment would set a target size for the fund, require a formula-based deposit mechanism and establish conditions and limits for withdrawals to prevent it from being raided for unnecessary purposes.
The push to strengthen the rainy day fund comes at a time when City Hall is nearing completion of a budget to close a revised $5.7 billion deficit (down from $12 billion at the start of 2026). The rainy day fund that the Mamdani administration inherited was not nearly enough to close the deficit on its own: just $2 billion, or 2% of the roughly $84.4 billion in city tax revenue collected.
Mamdani and Levine want the rainy day fund to have a target goal of saving up to 10% of city tax revenue collected; in this case, $8.44 billion. If the city had that much in reserve at the start of this year, it could have easily used the rainy day fund to plug the revised budget hole, and still have plenty left over. There would have been no drama or doubt about the budget or any calls to the governor asking for help.
The city needs a strong rainy day fund, and it needs to be codified in law so future mayors and Council members cannot touch it unless it is absolutely necessary. It is essential to have that reserve to weather any fiscal storm or calamity that may befall New York, and it will ensure that the essential programs the city provides to each of us daily continue unimpeded.
The challenge is that this is a charter revision amendment. The Charter Commission on Governmental Efficiency must approve the amendment, and then the voters must give it their approval via ballot referendum in order for it to become the law of the land.
When the time comes to vote on this referendum, the voters must remember to have their say—and support this unsexy yet necessary need for the city to save for a rainy day all it reasonably can.