Mayor, speaker agree to budget deal
/
Mayor Eric Adams and City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams announced that they had reached a budget deal on Friday, June 10, 2022. Photo by Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office
By Jacob Kaye
The first budget agreement between New York City’s new mayor and its almost entirely new City Council was reached early Friday, more than half a month before it’s official due date.
Speaking from City Hall on Friday, City Council Speaker and Queens Councilmember Adrienne Adams and Mayor Eric Adams announced the budget agreement between the legislative body and the city’s top executive. When the budget is finalized, it will be the largest in the city’s history.
Coming in at over $101 billion, the handshake deal budget surpasses the mayor’s proposed package by over $1 billion. Worked into the agreed upon budget – and the reason for the $1 billion boost – were a number of asks made by City Councilmembers, made in their response to the mayor’s original proposal.
“The council secured a record level of funding for our priorities through these negotiations with Mayor Adams,” Speaker Adams said. “We are investing in young people, our communities, those underserved by our government for too long and all New Yorkers. We are expanding access to key services, protecting our home owners, providing opportunity and ensuring sanitation services and parks are priorities for all communities.”
“A budget that strengthens communities to make them safer addresses historic inequities and aids in the city's recovery and what New Yorkers need and what they demand,” she added. “We are fully committed to that goal and we know that this is the beginning of that process, not the end.”
The growing budget is backed by larger than expected city tax revenues and federal stimulus money, city officials said. However, the mayor said that there will be an expected $4 billion budget gap on average over each of the next four years.
Inside the budget is an expansion of the city’s reserves, now clocking in at $8.3 billion, according to the mayor.
Though budget documents had not been provided to members of the press by the time of this paper’s publication, the speaker and mayor laid out a number of initiatives expected to make into the city’s Fiscal Year 2023 budget.
Included in the budget are a number of public safety initiatives – a major theme of the mayor’s first five months in office.
Speaker Adams announced the launch of a new program that would allocate $100,000 to each councilmember to be used for public safety initiatives and victim services programs within their respective districts.
“This new initiative is a key part of my goal to balance our safety priorities by investing in holistic safety solutions for New York City,” Speaker Adams said.
The fight over the city’s public safety approach began between the mayor and the Council before either took office. In the weeks leading up to Mayor Adams’ swearing in ceremony, the then-mayor elect and members of the Council’s progressive wing engaged in a back and forth over Mayor Adams suggestion that he hoped to bring back solitary confinement within the city’s jails.
The sparring has continued throughout the majority of the early days of the mayor’s term as he has turned to the NYPD to serve as the main component of his plan to lower the city’s crime rate – a number of councilmembers have urged the city to better utilize crime prevention strategies, including violence interrupters and programs that address the root causes of crime, instead of increased policing.
That fight continued into the budget negotiations as Mayor Adams looked to add the funds to hire nearly 600 additional correctional officers for the city’s jails – the Department of Correction was one of only a handful of city agencies spared cuts in the mayor’s proposed budget and in the final budget agreed upon on Friday.
Though the solution didn’t appear contentious Friday, City Councilmembers won the fight.
“I’m telling city agencies that every agency must do more within their budget, that was the message that the Council gave us and we agreed on,” Mayor Adams said. “We’re not going to do the [additional correctional officers hires].”
The mayor added the city will continue to delay the implementation of the Risk Management Accountability System – the program to replace traditional solitary confinement – in the city’s jail. RMAS was scheduled to be implemented last year but has been delayed because city officials say there are not enough trained correctional officers to implement the new program.
“As we look at how we house those who have a high level of violence, we’re going to stretch it out a little longer, but we’re going to stay on track with the funding,” Mayor Adams said.
Speaker Adams, whose mother was a correctional officer, said that the council was firm in its stance that no new correctional officers should be hired, citing the high rate of absenteeism among the law enforcement group.
“The council was very vocal about our concerns with that when we have so many correctional officers that are out and wanting to bring them back in,” Speaker Adams said. “We wanted DOC to look at their management, take a look at the way that they’re managing their staff a little closer.”
One of the only agencies not to be affected by budget cuts was the NYPD, which will see its budget remain flat, the officials announced. However, while the NYPD typically draws from its funding as one large pot, Speaker Adams said its funding will be segmented this year, in an effort to promote transparency and budget accountability.
“The council was also adamant about that and the management of those funds,” Speaker Adams said. “Typically, NYPD budget has gone up – we want to see NYPD managed more appropriately because the money is there.”
“Instead of growing, we want to see NYPD manage that funding a lot better than it has been in the past,” she added.
Friday’s announcement was a mostly celebratory affair, with the two Queens natives – the speaker and mayor graduated together from Bayside High School – acknowledging their good working relationship.
Noting that they’d turned in a budget weeks early, they turned their eyes toward state lawmakers, who turned in their budget more than a week late.
“As far as the state is concerned, they can take notes from today,” Speaker Adams said.
