By Bob Hennelly  

This week, after two independent agencies flagged the accuracy of the Adams administration’s budget projections, and reporting on critical data like the number of homeless, Mayor Adams reversed course on several controversial budget cuts that were part of his November austerity budget plan to close what he said was a $7 billion budget shortfall.

At the time, Adams maintained that the confluence of weaker revenues, the ending of billions in federal COVID aid and the cost of accommodating tens of thousands of migrant asylum seekers required the significant belt tightening across all Mayoral agencies. The major latest fiscal recalibration comes after a poll last month by Quinnipiac University finding that just 28 percent of the New Yorkers asked approved of how Adams was performing — the lowest approval rating of any mayor since 1996 when the poll was first taken.

In that same poll, 83 percent of the prospective voters said they were worried about the impact of the budget cuts Adams had announced while warning that more rollbacks could be in the offing. Longtime City Hall observers noted a striking similarity between the Adams team’s strategy and Mayor Bloomberg’s reliance on low-balling revenue projections  to control the narrative. 

Adams is scheduled to release his detailed preliminary budget on Jan. 16, the same day that Gov. Kathy Hochul will release her executive budget, an unusual occurrence Politico described as “a bizarre fiscal pileup that will reduce transparency and force the two executives to compete for headlines.”

Under the New York City Charter, the mayor and the City Council have to pass a balanced municipal budget by July 1. The New York City Council, led by Speaker Adrienne Adams as well the two other citywide office holders, New York City Brad Lander, and Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, have taken issue with Adams budget projections.

In December, the New York City Council’s own budget analysis identified an additional $1.2 billion in tax revenue not flagged by the Office of Management and Budget. In a Jan. 12  Daily News op-ed City Council Finance Chair Justin Brannan and Nathan Gusdorf, executive director of the Fiscal Policy Institute, asserted that it had grown to $1.5 billion.

On Wednesday, Mayor Adams told reporters he was now able to restore a Police Academy class as well as the fifth firefighter to twenty of the city’s busier fire companies thanks to better than projected revenue numbers and a closer review of the $12 billion in outside contracting the city expected to spend over the next three years.

“And now we're at a place of saying let's look at these contracts, let's see what we can renegotiate these contracts,” Adams said at the Jan. 10 press conference. “And so whatever you could think of what you would provide for an adult, we are providing for the migrants and asylum seekers.”

The next day Adams announced, “thanks to measures the city has implemented to responsibly manage the city's budget and strategically navigate significant fiscal challenges” he would restore garbage pick-up for 23,000 litter baskets as well as a Department of Parks and Recreation (NYC Parks) and New York City Department of Social Services' Parks Opportunity Program, “which gives thousands of low-income New Yorkers six-month paid opportunities and training programs each year.”

Last month, it was the zeroing out of that popular program that’s a well-established path to the civil service that prompted DC 37, the city’s largest union and an early backer of Adams, to sue  the administration for slashing thousands of union jobs without a legally required cost-benefit analysis. At stake, according to the union, was 2,300 union jobs that would be replaced by non-union contractors.

“The approach to deal with this budget deficit has been short-sighted,” Henry Garrido, the union’s executive director, told Politico an interview. “When you exclusively cut services to deal with a shortfall and you don’t pursue revenue collection options that you have…the public gets more upset at city workers because the garbage takes longer to be picked up, it takes longer to take care of their calls and it takes longer to deal with emergencies.” 

A few weeks later, it was the United Federation of Teachers’ turn to sue the Adams administration in a bid to head off over a half-billion in education cuts alleging in their filings the city was running afoul of a state law that prohibited such cuts unless its annual revenues actually declined.

“The ‘draconian’ cuts, the suit further claims, will infringe on students’ constitutional rights to a ‘sound basic education’,” reported Chalkbeat. “Three teachers and a speech therapist joined the suit as plaintiffs, outlining how they lack resources and supplies for their students, especially those with high needs.”

“The administration can’t go around touting the tourism recovery and the return of the city’s pre-pandemic jobs, and then create a fiscal crisis and cut education because of its own mismanagement of the asylum seeker problem,” Michael Mulgrew, the UFT president said in a statement. “Our schools and our families deserve better.”

“We are pleased the mayor has reversed course on his own plan, listening to the Council and voices of New Yorkers to protect sanitation services and vital job programs,” wrote City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams and Council Member Justin Brannan, chair of the Finance Committee. “The Council has said all along the money exists to avoid overly broad cuts and protect essential services relied upon by our constituents. This latest move to restore litter basket services and the Parks Opportunity Program only reinforces the fact that these and many other mid-year cuts were unnecessary.”

“City Hall’s budget crisis is a false narrative. We are glad many vital services are now off the budget chopping block. Funding for our students and our school communities must also be restored,” said Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers, in response to a query from Work-Bites.

On January 8, the Independent Budget Office issued a report  that concluded the Adams administration had used vastly inflated cost estimates on the City Council’s City Fighting Homelessness and Eviction Prevention Supplement (CityFHEPS) rental assistance voucher program it passed last year aimed to provide some relief to close to half-million low-income households most at risk from eviction. In December, NY I reported the Adams administration was refusing to implement the program “due to financial, operational and legal issues.”

“Every day [Department of Social Services] delays in implementing the laws is a day that more New Yorkers needlessly end up or remain in homeless shelters, and the City faces unnecessary legal liability,” Speaker Adams wrote in a letter to Department of Social Services Commissioner Molly Park. “We look forward to your prompt action.”

On January 9, the Department of Investigation issued a report that flagged a former top city official neglected to inform Mayor Eric Adams’ office “and the nonprofit Legal Aid Society after at least four families spent the night at the Prevention Assistance and Temporary Housing intake center in the Bronx on the night of July 18, 2022, a violation of state shelter rules,” reported David Brand with the Gothamist.

DOI also found that homeless data had been manipulated during the de Blasio administration in order “to decrease the Monthly Eligibility Rate in light of then-Mayor Bill de Blasio’s concerns about increases in the rate.”

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