Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s plan to make city buses free will not be part of Gov. Kathy Hochul’s upcoming State of the State address next week, the state’s top executive revealed on Thursday.
During a Jan. 8 TV interview, Hochul said she does not plan to include Mamdani’s proposal, one of the central planks of his winning mayoral campaign, in her address. Governors use the annual speech to lay out their policy agendas for the year ahead.
When asked by Pix11 host Dan Mannarino on Thursday whether fare-free buses would appear in her speech, the governor replied, “Not at this time.” But she also sought to emphasize that the proposal is by no means off the table.
“Nothing is a permanent ‘no,’ we’re having conversations,” Hochul said.
Mamdani spokesperson Dora Pekec did not respond to requests for comment.
Neither Hochul nor Mamdani mentioned the proposal during an event celebrating the one-year anniversary of congestion pricing on Monday.
Mike Gianaris, the state Senate’s Democratic deputy majority leader, who sponsored a pilot program for free buses on five lines in 2023, told amNewYork the governor’s State of the State and executive budget proposal are just the “beginning of the prcoess, not the end.” He noted that Hochul supported the pilot program, which ended in September 2024, after the state legislature declined to extend it.
“I don’t think this hard line that she holds, but it’s a process and it’s a negotiation, and it only begins the next couple of weeks, and it’ll take three or four months to figure out,” Gianaris said of the state budget process, which has an April 1 deadline that lawmakers often blow past.
Gianaris said he would not be surprised if it takes more than one session to make buses free citywide.
The governor made the remarks after standing with Mamdani in Brooklyn just a couple of hours earlier to announce that the state will jump-start his push to implement universal child care. She committed to fully funding the first two years of free pre-K for 2,000 2-year-olds a year in the city.
While Hochul has embraced Mamdani’s desire to implement universal child care, she has been far less committed to his fare-free buses proposal.
Mamdani’s team estimates it would cost the state roughly $700 million annually to eliminate bus fares.
The mayor has pitched hiking taxes on corporations to 11.5%, to be on par with New Jersey, and raising income levies on millionaires by 2%, as a means of paying for his major agenda items. His team says that together those taxes would raise roughly $9 billion a year.
However, such a tax increase must be passed through the state legislature and signed by the governor. Although Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie has signaled support for raising taxes on the wealthiest New Yorkers, Hochul said that possibility is off the table during the Pix11 interview.
“I don’t think it makes sense to tax anyone, or the wealthy in particular, for just the sake of raising taxes,” said Hochul, who is running for reelection this year.
MTA Chair and CEO Janno Lieber, who leads the agency that runs the city’s buses, has also cast doubt on the proposal. He has repeatedly said such a dramatic change to how buses are funded must first be meticulously studied prior to implementation.
Lieber has also questioned making buses free for everyone, noting that he prefers targeting the benefit to low-income New Yorkers, instead of potentially subsidizing fares for those who can afford to pay. He says he prefers the city-funded Fair Fares program, which provides half-priced fares to those making 145% of the federal poverty level.
The transit boss has also questioned Team Mamdani’s cost estimate for the proposal, noting he believes it would carry an annual price tag closer to $1 billion.
“We’re looking forward to having discussions with the new mayor and his team,” Lieber said during an unrelated Friday Bronx news conference. “He is a pro-transit guy. His rhetoric and his emphasis on transit is welcome to us. And obviously ,we have some complicated issues to talk through and work out. We’re going to be doing that during the course of the legislative session.”
Yet Danny Pearlstein, Riders Alliance’s director of policy and communications, said Mamdani may not need the state to fund the proposal after all.
“Though the city will need MTA approval and possibly some legislation to facilitate the funding, in all likelihood, what we’re going to see is one or more new revenue sources based on city resources,” he said.
Mamdani has suggested in the past that the city could raise revenue to fund his priorities by reforming its contracting practices, hiring more fiscal auditors, and collecting unpaid fines and fees.
Pearlstein also pointed to the possibility of the city raking in more funds by expanding metered parking and creating a permit system.
