Mayor Eric Adams released his executive budget for the City on Thursday, kicking off what is shaping up to be the most contentious City budget fight in more than a decade. To make up for the winding down of federal pandemic relief funds, Adams has called for cuts to services like libraries and funding for nonprofits, and continues to push down the headcount for the City's workforce by eliminating some 8,600 positions over the next two years. With more than 23,000 City positions still vacant, the net result is that agencies like the Department of Transportation are far less capable of creating safer streets, and the Human Resources Administration is less able to process food stamps quickly or find more permanent housing to get families out of the City's shelter system.
Funding for police, however, would remain flat, while zero progress has been made in recent years on cutting down on the use of overtime by the NYPD, which has sapped City coffers by hundreds of millions each year. (Adams promised to cut the use of overtime in half while campaigning for office, but overtime costs have only gone up.)
The budget comes after a first year in office during which Adams pushed through cuts to public schools and oversaw an exodus of City workers that has left the City far less capable of responding to the urgent crisis of skyrocketing rents and resulting homelessness among New Yorkers. For much of the past six months, Adams has also placed much of the blame for the City's possible budget gap on migrants being bused to New York City by governors of other states, and the cost of social services the migrants need once they arrive in the city.
The City Council, still burned from last year's disastrous process where members of the council's progressive caucus signed off on school budget cuts and then immediately tried to undo them, has signaled that it's ready to fight Adams on cuts and take a far more adversarial attitude than last year's hug-fest. Both City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams and the council's budget chair Justin Brannan slammed the proposed budget, and pledged to fight for more funding for social services as the City tries to pass a budget by June. The city comptroller, Brad Lander, issued a statement which cautioned that while the City has not yet built up enough reserves to weather a possible recession (comptrollers love to build up reserves!), it still shouldn't pursue cuts that would hurt its economic growth in the future, like those proposed for universal 3-K, CUNY, and libraries. Both Lander and Adams called on the state legislature to up their financial commitment to New York City, especially to help pay for services for arriving migrants.
While Adams has unleashed his apocalyptic budget, it's unclear whether New York City is actually facing a possible budget crisis or just general uncertainty about what lies ahead. Still, the Adams administration has viewed it as an opportunity to push for an austerity agenda that severely hampers City government just when many of the poorest New Yorkers need it the most. Will the City Council swallow the pill again? We'll soon find out.
Some links to start your Friday:
- New York's former chief judge Janet DiFiore used state resources to pay for around-the-clock chauffeuring and protection detail, costing taxpayers an estimated $1 million a year—all without any approval for the service. DiFiore used the detail for seven years, before suddenly resigned this summer. The revelation of possible ethics violations arrived soon after.
- Speaking of chief judge, the battle over Governor Kathy Hochul's pick for DiFiore's replacement continues. A hearing is now set for next week in Albany, in front of a committee now stacked with opponents of the nomination of Hector LaSalle. Undeterred, shady money groups trying to push LaSalle over the finish line are operating a pro-LaSalle ad campaign from Delaware. All while law professors are bringing up LaSalle's own possible ethics issues.
- CUNY and SUNY students are speaking out against fee hikes proposed by the governor. "We were already worried about the budget cuts that the mayor had proposed for CUNY. And now, tuition hikes. They are not welcome at all," said one student.
- After a judge blocked their pay raise at Uber's request, app-based drivers are facing serious financial struggles.
- Will the new Queens soccer stadium cost the City nothing, or actually hundreds of millions of dollars? The New York Times is just digging into this now, but if you wanted people asking the very same question with the same answers weeks ago, we'd recommend Hell Gate's coverage.
- And finally, the saga of George Santos continues. While his own Long Island Republican compatriots call for his resignation, it turns out his "operations director" is tied to a far-right fascist-adjacent group, and now newspapers are tripping him up in a whole new way:
