ERIC OPEN TO CUTS REPEAL
Budget boss Jiha sees improved economy but makes no promises
Mayor Adams is open to reversing budget cuts he enacted last year if positive local economic trends continue, his top fiscal adviser said Monday, giving City Council members hope that some of the mayor’s most drastic service reductions can be undone.
“If financial conditions improve and the economy remains strong, we will work with the Council, as we always do, to look at priorities of the Council and the administration and then see what can be fully or partially restored,” Jacques Jiha, who heads Adams’ Office of Management and Budget, said during an hourslong Council hearing.
Jiha made that comment after Council Speaker Adrienne Adams (D-Queens) specifically asked him about undoing a $24 million cut that the mayor subjected the city’s three public library systems to in November, forcing them to eliminate Sunday hours at their branches.
Jiha declined to make any specific commitments, though.
“I cannot commit at this point in time that we are going to restore X, Y and Z,” the budget director testified.
The hearing, held to examine the mayor’s $109.4 billion preliminary budget proposal released in January, marked the official starting point of months of negotiations between the mayor’s office and the Council before they must come to an agreement on a city financial plan before the July 1 start of the 2025 fiscal year. In the coming weeks, heads from nearly all city agencies will appear before the Council to testify about their budgetary needs.
Ahead of Monday’s hearing, the Council released a new revenue projection, first reported by the Daily News, that projects the city to be on track to rake in $3.3 billion more in income, property, sales and business taxes over the 2024 and 2025 fiscal years than what’s predicted by Jiha’s office.
Council Democrats repeatedly argued in the hearing that their rosier revenue projections should allow the mayor to undo many of the budget cuts he pushed through in November and January on the auspices that the city needed to offset migrant crisis spending and accommodate Jiha’s lower tax revenue forecast.
“With higher than expected revenues in this fiscal year and a durable, resilient economy, I believe our city has the flexibility to reverse many cuts that have been made,” Speaker Adams said at Monday’s hearing.
Jiha did not say he’s ready to accept the Council’s new revenue estimate. He did tell Council members he’s “hoping that your forecast is right,” though.
Brooklyn Councilman Justin Brannan, a Democrat who is chairman of the Finance Committee, suggested after the hearing that he was optimistic.
“If both sides of City Hall can walk into the room with the same shared set of objective data, we will be fine,” Brannan said when asked if he’s hopeful about getting some of Mayor Adams’ cuts reversed. “Hardworking New Yorkers deserve nothing less.”
The mayor already undid some budget cuts in January, including at the NYPD, the FDNY and the Sanitation Department. He said he was able to do so because he had ordered his administration to drastically reduce the amount of money being spent on housing and services for newly arrived migrants.
In Monday’s hearing, Jiha said a key element of managing migrant spending entails driving down the number of migrants in city shelters. The administration’s primary vehicle for reducing the census is its controversial 30- and 60-day policies, which limit how long migrants, including families with children, can stay consecutively in shelters.
“If we don’t bring down the population, I don’t know how we’re going to sustain this in the long run,” Jiha told Council members.