Adams And Adams Shake On City Budget For Last Time

By Katie Honan, The City

June 30, 2025

Mayor Eric Adams and City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams officially shook hands on a nearly $116 billion budget late Friday, culminating the end of the pair’s sometimes contentious negotiations while adding more money for mental-health services and child care.

The fiscal year 2026 budget, which is set to be voted on by the full Council and approved next week, begins July 1. It includes investments in programs to guard the city and New Yorkers against the current federal administration, like $41.9 million for immigration services and $5 million for suicide hotline services.

It also adds a universal childcare pilot, with $10 million committed to getting hundreds of kids under 2 years old with free childcare.

Both Mayor Adams and Speaker Adams — who attended Queens’ Bayside High School together — said the budget’s significance came from what it provided for working-class New Yorkers.

“New York City’s greatest strength is its people,” Speaker Adams said.

“To ensure that our city is livable and affordable for all New Yorkers, it is critical that we invest in them.”

Highlights include expanding eligibility for Fair Fares, which provides discounted MetroCards for low-income New Yorkers, to 150% of the federal poverty level, with $5 million more. The City University of New York also received $7.8 million for its CUNY Reconnect program, which helps adults re-enroll in college to finish their degree.

The city’s three library systems also received additional money — $17 million — which will add Sunday service to 10 branches that don’t already have it.

“At a time when libraries across the country are under threat, New York City has once again safeguarded our vital institutions,” the heads of the Brooklyn, Queens, and New York public library systems said in a statement.

More than $32 million was set aside for mental health services, with the funding being designated as “baselined” — meaning it should be defaulted into future budgets. That money is supposed to create more supportive housing units and increase the number of mobile treatment teams working with people on the streets, among other things

There’s also $10.2 million for the city’s Parks Department to hire 170 additional workers like gardeners and Parks Enforcement Patrol officers — although that’s short of funding for the nearly 800 positions that have been cut since 2023.

Friday’s handshake agreement between the mayor’s office and the Council marks the end of the pair once dubbed the “Adams and Adams law firm” by the mayor. The speaker is term-limited and on Tuesday came in a distant fourth in the Democratic mayoral primary..

Adams, on Thursday, officially announced his re-election campaign, but may be facing an uphill battle running as an independent

Although the pair’s first budget in 2022 was passed way before the deadline, there were later complications as members realized it included significant cuts to the education budget.

In subsequent budgets, both sides of City Hall butted heads over funding for libraries, over cuts, and over spending for migrant and asylum seekers.

This year was a swan song, a budget of celebrations and so far praised by advocates across the city.

Council Finance Committee chair Justin Brannan said that budgets were about choices, and he was happy with the ones that made up this one.

“After too many years of constant uncertainty, this budget shows that New York City is finally choosing to invest in the people who make New York City work,” he said.

Budget Critics

Despite the self-congratulations, fiscal experts quickly called the budget reckless for increasing expected tax revenues as both national and local economies slow.

The budget, they point out, increases spending, despite the prospects of billions of dollars in reductions in federal aid from the proposed Trump budget. And it does not increase reserves, despite federal plans that would slash the social safety net and force the city to pick up millions more to make up the gaps.

“The budget agreement adds nothing to the Rainy Day Fund or the General Reserve, and therefore fails to protect the city from the pressing threat of federal budget cuts,” said city Comptroller Brad Lander, who just finished third in the Democratic mayoral primary. “It is a dereliction of duty to the future of New York City to fail to shore up our reserves.”

Lander had called on the mayor and City Council to add $2 billion to reserves.

Other critics, like the Citizens Budget Commission, had sought to set aside as much as $3 billion to the current $8.5 billion, which is the highest in dollar terms but not as a percentage of the budget.
Instead, the mayor and the Council increased expected tax revenues by $617 billion for the new 2026 fiscal year beginning July 1 and the following year, despite a local economy that has stalled.

The Citizens Budget Commission notes that spending increased by more than 6%, or twice the rate of inflation. It called the end product “unaffordable, unprepared for federal cuts, and underinvesting in the rainy day and despite strong current year revenues.”

This press release was produced by The City. The views expressed here are the author’s own.