Commentary

Free Means You Wait. Someone Else Pays.

Posted on by Bill McCarthy

Zohran Mamdani sold New York a simple product: child care from six weeks to five years, no fee, no income test, no citizenship test. Campaign price tag: about $6 billion a year, billed to the rich. The city is now discovering that “free” is a waiting list with a hole in the budget.

The Promise Versus the Spreadsheet

A cost model released this month puts a full, stable, citywide system at $8.7 billion to $9.3 billion a year. That is roughly $3 billion above the campaign number and about $27,000 per child. Last fiscal year the city budgeted $2.5 billion for child-care delivery and spent $3.8 billion. Under-counting is not a surprise. It is the habit.

State money is covering the first slice: $1.2 billion over two years, including about $73 million for the first 2,000 free seats for two-year-olds and $425 million for year two. The governor has not pledged what happens after that. The mayor’s line is that the question is not whether it costs money, but who pays. That is a speech. It is not a funding plan for year three.

What Families Are Actually Getting

This fall the city awarded about 2,000 free 2-K seats. More than 5,700 families applied. About 3,700 landed on a waitlist. Next year the target is about 12,000 seats, then a build-out toward every two-year-old who wants one by the end of the term—on the order of 55,000 children if demand shows up. That is still only one age group. Universal from infancy through pre-K is a different animal.

The pilot is expensive even before it is universal. State money works out to more than $36,000 per 2-K seat. Private center care for that age has been running in the low-to-mid $20,000s. City Hall says family tuition is not the same as the cost of running a public program. That is true. It is also an admission that government care costs more per kid than the market it is replacing.

A separate, smaller move covers sliding-scale copays for about 22,000 families already on subsidies—$5.2 million this year, baselined at $6.24 million later. That is real money for those households. It is a rounding error next to a $9 billion system.

The Workers and the Checks

A full system needs tens of thousands of additional workers. One count put the extra hires around 23,000, mostly for infants and toddlers. Another put the total workforce near 68,000 if every age is covered in licensed settings. Those people do not appear because a mayor announces a map.

Providers trying to open this September say the city has not sent the advance payments they usually get in August. Directors have floated personal cash, talked about reverse mortgages, and wondered whether they can staff the first day of school. A program that cannot pay last year’s contractors on time is not ready to absorb every toddler in the five boroughs.

How This Plays Out

Rationing first. Seats go to chosen zip codes and whoever wins the lottery. Waitlists become the product. “Universal” means you may apply. “Free” means the city pays if you get in.

Then the money fight. The campaign paid for the dream with a tax on high earners the state has to enact and keep. Albany’s two-year check does not fund a permanent entitlement. When the state check shrinks, the city either raises taxes, cuts other services, shrinks the program, or all three.

Then quality and cost drift. Infant care is the expensive end. If reimbursement lags, home-based providers drop out and centers cream the easier ages. If reimbursement rises to keep staff, the $9 billion figure was the floor.

New York already spends billions and covers only about a third of children under five. Jumping to everyone, for free, with no immigration screen, is not a line item. It is a new department of government that will never be cheaper than the brochure. The mayor can keep cutting ribbons on two thousand seats. The bill for the rest comes due after the applause.

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