Lander pitches doubling NYC’s general reserve fund to protect from Trump admin

Leaning into his experience as the city’s chief financial officer, Brad Lander wants to safeguard the city against potential future federal funding cuts as mayor by adding at least $1 billion to the city’s general reserve for a new protective fund – a proposal that would seek to stockpile monetary resources to protect schools, nonprofits and other critical government-funded programming over the next four years of the Trump administration. 

The proposal is part of a broader fiscal plan Lander unveiled as part of his mayoral campaign Thursday morning. Some aspects of the plan – like mandating deposits into and limiting withdrawals from the city’s rainy day fund and launching a public “ContractStat” tool to track timeliness of payments to contractors – are evergreen in the sense that they are aimed at improving the city’s fiscal management for years to come. But the threat of future cuts to federally funded programs under the Trump administration is a big reason why if elected mayor, Lander would add at least the billion-dollar sum to the city’s general reserve – nearly doubling it – in 2026. This money – what he’s calling a “Protecting NYC” reserve – would come from existing revenue streams.

More than $100 billion in federal grants and payments flows from Washington D.C. to New York City, funding a myriad of things that New Yorkers rely on, according to a report from the comptroller’s office released late last year. While about $9.6 billion of that goes directly to the city’s $115 billion operating budget for fiscal year 2025, about $25 billion goes to social security, $4.6 billion goes to food benefits, $22 billion goes to Medicare and nearly $32 billion goes to Medicaid. Another $5.5 billion goes to public entities like the New York City Housing Authority, the City University of New York and New York City Health + Hospitals.

While a $1 billion reserve would only go so far in the case of major federal funding cuts, the idea is to create a segregated pot of money that could be quickly used in an urgent situation.

For example, the federal government's abrupt clawback two weeks ago of over $80 million given to the city to house migrants further spurred Lander to propose the creation of the new reserve. Slamming the move as illegal, Lander wrote a letter to the city’s Finance Department asking for information about what measures have been taken to prevent the federal government from seizing funds from city accounts in the future. (The Adams administration also filed a lawsuit to reclaim the funds.) In any similar future instances, the Protecting NYC reserve could theoretically be used to fill that gap quickly so operations aren’t impacted as legal action is taken. A spokesperson for Lander’s campaign described the reserve as “another creative safeguard” to protect against President Donald Trump.

“When Elon Musk reached in and stole $80 million dollars from New York City’s bank account two weeks ago my office raised the alarm bell and said, no way, get out of our bank accounts,” Lander said at a Wednesday evening mayoral forum hosted by the municipal workers union District Council 37. “We are going to have to be a lot smarter about how we get ready in the face of what’s coming.” 

Additionally, Lander proposes creating a joint city and state emergency task force to examine the impacts of federal funding cuts and clawbacks and take legal action “when appropriate.” He also wants to gather a group of business, labor, religious, civic and community leaders to discuss how to protect the city and New Yorkers who could be particularly impacted by the Trump administration. 

As city comptroller, the plan makes sense for Lander to pursue. Even before jumping into the mayoral race, Lander and Adams clashed over differing budget estimates and fiscal management processes. Much of the proposals unveiled Thursday are similar to ones Lander has unveiled as comptroller.

Lander is not the first mayoral hopeful to make the fiscal management case. Every comptroller this century has run for mayor. This race includes two comptrollers: Lander and former Comptroller Scott Stringer. Both hope to break the “comptroller curse.”

At Wednesday's DC 37 forum, Stringer pitched a very similar proposal to Lander’s: “Here’s my plan: This budget, we need $500 million from the city, we need $500 million from the state. We need a rainy day fund. We can’t legally create a rainy day fund, but we need a rainy day fund,” Stringer said. “So when they come and claw money out, we can put money back.”