FEDS GIVE OK ON MIGRANT AID
Paperwork approved, increase for hotels granted, but $107M still waiting on receipts
President Biden’s administration has approved the release of nearly $107 million in migrant aid for New York City in response to Mayor Adams’ office finally submitting the required paperwork last week after months of application delays, local and federal officials told the Daily News on Thursday.
The aid — which has sat untouched since Congress first allocated it last summer — is at long last being authorized for disbursement to the city after the Adams administration provided the feds last Friday with required budgetary documentation as well as a waiver asking the feds to relax a cap on how much of the money can be used on hotel costs, White House and City Hall officials confirmed.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency, which administers the program that includes the outstanding aid for the city, formally approved the waiver Friday afternoon, clearing the way for the city to receive the full pot of $106.8 million, White House officials said.
Under the initial application rules, only 10% of the total aid earmarked for the city could be used to cover costs related to housing migrants in hotels. FEMA bumped that figure up to 15% in response to the Adams administration’s waiver request, a step that, combined with the submission of budgetary documents, brought the rest of the application up to snuff, according to the White House.
A White House official said the Adams team finally came into compliance with all paperwork requirements after accepting help from a FEMA team that traveled to the city at the beginning of this month to resolve the city’s application issues.
A City Hall spokesman confirmed the aid authorization came after the city supplemented its application last week.
The spokesman, Charles Lutvak, stressed that the green light from the feds doesn’t mean the cash is immediately getting pumped into the city’s coffers, though. Now that its application has been approved, the city still needs to submit detailed receipts for the money to actually be forked over, Lutvak said.
“We appreciate the productive collaboration of our federal partners and will continue to work closely with them so money can be released,” Lutvak said.
The city already received $49 million from the feds in migrant aid last year from a separate program that did not require detailed documentation up front.
The long-delayed aid from the other program became a flashpoint earlier this month when a Biden administration official told The News that it wasn’t being released because the mayor’s team had failed for months to submit the correct paperwork. The official described the mayor’s administration as having “not stepped up to the plate” and noted that other U.S. cities, including Chicago, had managed to submit the correct
paperwork to unlock their allotted funds and start drawing them down.
The comments from the Biden administration official drew a sharp rebuke from the mayor, who argued the feds’ application requirements are far too complicated and not considerate of the crisis the city’s facing in trying to shelter and provide services for tens of thousands of mostly Latin American migrants.
On the flipside, Adams maintained before Thursday that the city’s application was complete and that the feds were holding up the money.
“All the paperwork is submitted,” he said in a March 6 appearance on Fox5.
Ultimately, the mayor has said that the outstanding $107 million is a drop in the bucket in comparison to the more than $4 billion the city has spent so far on the local migrant crisis. Last year, the mayor said Biden had “failed” New York by not sending more help.
The mayor has drawn the ire of some fellow Democrats by publicly lambasting Biden over the issue. Supporters of Biden say Congress can ultimately only allocate the additional funding the mayor is seeking, and that he’s undermining the president politically by railing against him ahead of his reelection battle against Donald Trump this year.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, New York’s top Democrat on Capitol Hill, said after Thursday’s aid approval news that he’s pushing for allocating more migrant assistance, but that it’s being blocked by congressional Republicans.
“I worked hard with NYC and FEMA to deliver these funds,” Schumer wrote on X about the $107 million bucket. “Now Republicans must stop blocking the strong, bipartisan border bill, which can deliver more.”
Lutvak echoed Schumer’s sentiment.
“We will continue to advocate for additional federal funding as the city has spent more than $4 billion to manage this national humanitarian crisis, as well as for the comprehensive immigration reform that far-right Republicans have blocked for decades,” he said.