Adams Pleads On 'Tin Cup Day': Please Don't Make NYC Pay More For MTA

NEW YORK CITY — Mayor Eric Adams thinks Gov. Kathy Hochul has been a "great partner," but he has a few billion-dollar problems with her proposed 2024 budget, the mayor testified Wednesday.

New York City will have to shoulder more than $1 billion in new costs and cost shifts in the coming fiscal year, largely from new MTA funding ask and Medicaid cuts, Adams told lawmakers in Albany.

"The city cannot possibly carry the weight of such big commitments without cutting essential programs that support New Yorkers," he said.

"This is not a threat. This is math."

The stark mathematical warning came as Adams visited Albany for what's commonly called "Tin Cup Day" — the annual tradition of local elected officials traveling to the state capital to figuratively rattle a cup for funding.

Adams was careful to paint his qualms with Hochul's proposed $227 billion state budget as differences that can be bridged.

But he also listed a litany of issues, mainly with Hochul's solution for MTA funding woes that asks New York City to cough up more than $500 million more a year for the cash-strapped transit agency.

New York City dwellers also will pay more — from 0.34 to 0.5 percent — in a payroll mobility tax, he noted.

"We all want what’s best for riders, but we need a fairer and more sustainable proposal," he said. "This current proposal hits New Yorkers twice — once through the higher fares that riders will still face and once through diminished service delivery by their local government, which will have at least half a billion dollars each year going to subsidize a state-run authority."

Adams also argued proposals to raise a cap on charter schools and to reduce class sizes will each cost the city more than $1 billion.

And plans to cut Medicaid support will take $343 million from the city's budget and undo a substantial recent reform that kept costs in the state's ledger, Adams argued.

The mayor's testimony garnered criticism itself from many local advocates, particularly on his push to change the state's bail laws.

"This change will only lead to confusion and the pretrial caging of more New Yorkers in deadly local jails," advocates with The Legal Aid Society and public defender groups said in a joint statement.

"The route to public safety is achieved by increasing investments in community-based mental health and other services, not in rollbacks to New York’s bail or Raise the Age laws."