Good morning. It’s Wednesday. Today we’ll look at unused holiday gift cards. We’ll also get details on Gov. Kathy Hochul’s budget proposal.
Did Santa bring you a gift card?
The state comptroller, Thomas DiNapoli, has succinct advice: Spend it.
There are a lot of unused gift cards floating around. They are worth a lot of money, and claiming it later can be tedious. DiNapoli’s office says there are nearly $55.5 million in gift card balances in New York City. Of that, some $15.5 million was from gift cards that were last used before 2021.
Of the $55.5 million, Manhattanites have the most unspent gift card money — $21.8 million from all years, according to DiNapoli’s tabulation.
Brooklyn residents had the second-highest total, with almost $13 million, followed by Queens with $9.7 million, the Bronx with $9.1 million and Staten Island with just under $2 million.
Under state law, gift card issuers must report the balances to DiNapoli’s office, which works with retailers to track down people who are due unclaimed funds.
But the comptroller’s office can send a notification only if it knows whom to look for and where to look — meaning, if you have registered the card with the retailer, or if the gift card was purchased with a credit card or a debit card that can be traced. By registering a gift card, DiNapoli said in a statement, “if you do forget about it, it’s easier to return those funds to you.” If you have a gift card that you did not register, you can still check with the comptroller’s office.
Gift cards are popular — two-thirds of holiday shoppers said they spent money on them last year, according to CivicScience, a Pittsburgh-based research firm. That was the same percentage as in 2024.
One reason gift cards have caught on is that they are convenient — and for some givers, they sidestep the what-to-get problem. Some 24 percent of 335 people in a survey by CivicScience said they were giving a gift card to someone who was particularly hard to buy for. “It’s a hard gift to mess up,” CivicScience said, noting that Gen Z and millennials favored service provider gift cards — think Uber or DoorDash — as well as sports-related cards, while older gift card buyers preferred cards for restaurants.
Scam warnings
Consumer agencies have warned about gift card scams. A New York State law took effect in 2023 requiring retailers to post a notice about potential gift card fraud; a similar rule became law in New Jersey last year.
Scammers can take gift cards off a rack in a store and copy the numbers and PINs on the cards. This often means the scammers open the packaging and reseal it, or try to, before they put the cards back on the rack. Then a scammer waits for someone to buy one of the cards — and for the recipient to activate it.
After that, with software, the scammer can draw down the balance. Consumer agencies say the solution is to avoid buying or using cards that appear to have been tampered with.
Weather
Today will be cloudy with a high near 35. It will be partly cloudy tonight with wind gusts as high as 20 m.p.h. and a steady temperature around 35.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
In effect until Feb. 12 (Lincoln’s Birthday).
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“The mayor has challenged us to be bold and ambitious. I’m all for it, but that means we’re going to have our work cut out for us.” — Mike Flynn, who as commissioner of the city’s Department of Transportation can be expected to work on fulfilling Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s pledge to make buses free.
The latest Metro news
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Tax the rich, later: Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s campaign promise to increase taxes for the wealthiest New Yorkers may be put on hold while he and Gov. Kathy Hochul focus on universal child care.
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Two vetoes, and goodbye: On Gov. Philip Murphy’s last day in office before Mikie Sherrill was sworn in as his successor, he vetoed two bills intended to expand immigrants’ rights. His aides cited concerns that the bills would “unintentionally undermine protections for New Jersey’s immigrant communities.”
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Layoffs at the Metropolitan Opera: Continuing financial challenges prompted the Met to lay off some employees and cut salaries for others. It may also sell its Marc Chagall murals, valued at $55 million, and is considering selling naming rights for its home in Lincoln Center.
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Fewer protests and sealed gates: The gates to Columbia University’s main campus, historically open to the public, swung shut more than two years ago to limit the potential for protests and unrest. Now entry is permitted only to those who hold Columbia identification and their approved guests.
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A subway vigilante returns to the spotlight: Two books are being published about Bernie Goetz, who shot four Black teenagers on a downtown subway in 1984. Both books will link the case to debates about race, crime and sensationalism.
Hochul proposes a $260 billion state budget
Gov. Kathy Hochul released a $260 billion plan for the state budget on Tuesday. It “reflects two realities at one time,” she said — “real momentum here in New York” and “volatility ahead, because of the uncertainty out of Washington.”
There was another reality that she did not mention: Her often-repeated promise not to raise taxes, especially in a year when she is up for re-election. Large Wall Street bonuses and stock market gains mean that the state expects to collect $17 billion more in tax revenue over the next two years than originally estimated, helping the governor avoid having to make tougher choices on spending right now.
The budget she proposed echoed the policy proposals she outlined last week. It calls for significantly expanding child care services and rebuilding infrastructure for transit projects and sewers. But concerns about federal cuts hung over her proposed blueprint for state spending in the fiscal year ahead.
New York received $93 billion from the federal government this year, but already there are indications that President Trump will cut funding in the fiscal years ahead. The president declared last week that the administration would withhold funds from any state that contained a so-called sanctuary city and restricted collaboration with immigration officials.
The governor said the state was exploring ways to fight such cuts. New York has several sanctuary cities, and while the state cooperates with Immigration and Customs Enforcement on cases involving immigrants accused of a crime, it does not cooperate with civil immigration enforcement.
The budget will be worked out with leaders of the State Assembly and Senate in the coming months. On Tuesday they were broadly supportive of the governor’s plans.
“Affordability is the name of the game right now,” said Carl Heastie, the speaker of the State Assembly. “We’re happy over the expansion of child care and happy to see that we’re still investing in Medicaid and education.”
METROPOLITAN diary
Some guide
Dear Diary:
I lead a walking tour of Lower Manhattan that covers 400 years of sanitation history. During the tour, I wear a headband with fuzzy rat ears so my group can find me easily.
One Sunday afternoon, as I stood at the corner of Wall and Pearl Streets and told the tour’s members about New York City’s first official garbage dumps, an older woman in a fur coat interrupted.
“Excuse me,” she asked. “But can you help me? I forgot where I parked my car.”
I stared at her. My group stared at her. And she stared back, apparently unfazed by my rat ears or the fact that I was in the middle of leading a tour.
“I can try,” I said, curious where this was going.
“It’s near a square that has black statues and a French cafe nearby,” she said.
I thought about it for a moment.
“Walk up Wall Street to William Street, then turn right,” I said. “The French cafe is either on Liberty Street or Maiden Lane. You’ll find your car around there.”
She thanked me and left. I turned back to my group and continued my story about garbage in Nieuw Amsterdam in 1657.
— Suzanne Reisman
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Tell us your New York story here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.
Davaughnia Wilson, Tara Terranova and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at [email protected].
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James Barron writes the New York Today newsletter, a morning roundup of what’s happening in the city.
The post New Yorkers Have Failed to Spend $55 Million in Gift Cards appeared first on New York Times.
