For months, New York City Mayor Eric Adams bemoaned the proposed budget cuts he would be forced to make to city programs because of the migrant crisis.
He called on President Joe Biden and Governor Kathy Hochul to provide financial assistance. It was not fair, he said repeatedly, that New Yorkers would have to suffer because the city was responsible to house and care for migrants seeking asylum.
But on Tuesday, Adams revealed a budget for Fiscal Year 2025 vastly different than what he had predicted. The Brownsville native proudly declared his team had balanced the budget at $109.4 million, and that many of the cuts to services would not need to happen.
“Our city faced an unprecedented Fiscal Year 25 budget gap of $7.1 billion in the November 2023 financial plan update. By law, that gap must be closed in this preliminary budget,” Adams said. “We developed our plan early, and I am proud to report that it has succeeded.”
When Adams announced budget cuts in November, he froze police hiring and cut school funding. Libraries across the city were forced to close on Sundays. Now, all three of those decisions will be reversed.
But some local politicians have criticized Adams’ approach, insisting that the mayor’s initial proposed cuts were a self-inflicted wound.
“Setting your own house on fire and then putting it out doesn’t make you a hero,” Ana María Archila and Jasmine Gripper, co-directors of the Working Families Party, told The New York Times.
Adams pushed back on that point, attributing the change to several factors: The city will be receiving more expected tax revenue, or $2.9 billion, in Fiscal Years 2024 and 2025 than initially believed, and about 60% of the migrants who came through the shelter system were able to cycle out, he said.
Hochul also carved out $2.4 billion in the $233 billion state budget to help the city manage the migrant crisis.
“Did we know that we were going to automatically be able to get 60 percent of the people out of our care? No, we did not,” Adams said. “I understand that some people want to politicize this and I got it, you know, but we have to remain focused during these times of navigating the city out of this condition we're in. And there are going to be people who are going to critique and criticize the job that we've done. This is part of the business that we're in and we just have to accept that.”
It remains to be seen whether the budget reversal will improve Adams’ approval ratings, which fell to 28 percent in December, the lowest since Quinnipiac University’s poll began in 1996. The mayor still faces negative attention from the federal investigation into his 2021 campaign’s ties to Turkey, and the sexual abuse lawsuit filed against him under New York’s Adults Survivors Act.
But on Tuesday, at least, Adams stood proudly at a lectern in City Hall beneath a painting of Alexander Hamilton.
“We care deeply about the people who already live here and those who will someday call the five boroughs their home, as many of our parents and grandparents have done,” Adams said. “This carefully planned and disciplined budget allows us to keep helping working families, keep providing opportunities for all New Yorkers and deep our city the beacon of hope.”
