Adams to Albany: We need more money
ALBANY — Gov. Kathy Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams have prided themselves on the close alliance they have built over the past year, joining forces as likeminded Democrats on some of New York’s most pressing issues, from public safety to affordable housing.
On Wednesday, however, their working relationship was put to the test, as Adams visited the state Capitol to push back against a series of proposals that Hochul unveiled in her $227 billion state budget proposal last month.
Testifying in a joint legislative hearing, Adams said Hochul’s budget would hurt the city by forcing it to spend billions of dollars on charter schools, public transit and Medicaid costs.
“The city cannot possibly carry the weight of such big commitments without cutting essential programs that support New Yorkers,” Adams said.
The mayor’s testimony in Albany is an annual rite of passage, known here as Tin Cup Day, during which mayors trek to the Capitol to often plead for more money and more favorable treatment from the state. The pilgrimage typically serves as an opportunity for local officials to air grievances, sometimes exposing tensions between cities and the state.
But the mayor received a relatively warm reception from state lawmakers, who loved to pillory his predecessor, Bill de Blasio. Adams received a few tough questions about food stamp delays and major rent increases for rentstabilized apartments, but the tone was mostly collegial.
Adams, in turn, sought to be charming and was measured in his push for further changes to bail-reform laws. At one point, the mayor told lawmakers: “I’m a nice guy.”
Liz Krueger, the powerful chair of the Senate Finance Committee, replied: “I’m not sure that gets you much in Albany.”
Last year, Adams had taken a more forceful tone in urging state lawmakers to make it easier to keep violent offenders in jail.
This time, Adams took issue with the governor’s plan to shore
up the subway system’s finances by requiring that the city contribute $500 million annually. He said her proposal to remove a cap on the number of charter schools would cost the city more than $1 billion and argued that the city needs more money from the state to handle $4 billion in costs associated with an influx of migrants from the nation’s southern border.
Adams has bristled in particular at Hochul’s proposal for the city to pay more toward the budget of
the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which is considering fare hikes for subway and bus riders and service cuts to bridge its deficit and is controlled by the governor.
“We are told to pay half a billion dollars forever,” he said at a news conference last week. “No other municipality in the state has been asked to do anywhere near that. Only New York City.”
On Wednesday, Adams said he was opposed to fare increases and hoped the state could find additional funding to avoid them.
The governor has proposed spending $1 billion over two years to address the tens of thousands of
asylum-seekers arriving in New York City. But city officials have raised concerns that the state’s commitment may only amount to about one-third of all shelter costs, according to an internal memo from City Hall, which was reported by Politico.
Adams, a former state senator, visited Albany with an entourage that included his budget director, Jacques Jiha, and a new adviser, Diane Savino, who served as a state senator for 18 years.
His team will continue to lobby state leaders over the budget; a deal is typically reached by April 1.
Adams has continued to call on state lawmakers to
make it easier to detain “extreme recidivists,” a term he has increasingly used instead of mentioning bail reform by name. At a news conference Tuesday, Adams said he wanted to target the roughly 1,700 people who are responsible for most of the violent crime in the city.
“If we zero in on those 1,700 to 2,000, you’re going to see a substantial decrease in some of the violence that we are witnessing,” he said, “and that is my message to the lawmakers in Albany.”