Don't Blame Migrants For Bad NYC Budget Math, Lawmakers Tell Mayor

NEW YORK CITY — Don't blame asylum seekers for your bad math, Mayor Eric Adams.

Or so said a cavalcade of City Council members and advocates who spent the bulk of Monday in a marathon hearing raking Adams administration budget officials over the coals for the mayor's controversial midyear proposed budget cuts.

The city actually will have $1.5 billion for the next two fiscal years than Adams' budget officials forecasted, according to a City Council analysis released before the hearing.

Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, who is not related to the mayor, said the city does face tough economic headwinds. But she argued the mayor's proposed cuts of 5 percent for most agencies aren't the surgical or strategic belt-tightening needed.

"Cutting every agency's budget indiscriminately will impact everyday New Yorkers," she said.

The mayor's proposed cuts have been lambasted as cruel or unnecessary, sometimes both, by many lawmakers and advocates since he proposed them in November.

But officials such as Jacques Jiha, the city's budget director, have maintained the city faces an upcoming $7 billion budget gap

Adams, the mayor, has largely pinned the shortfall on continuing costs for the migrant crisis. And Jiha, during the hearing, said smaller actions won't fund what the city needs to spend.

"It is not sustainable," Jiha said.

But the argument that the cost of asylum seekers is stretching the city's finances literally doesn't add up, argued Justin Brannan, the City Council's finance chair.

Brannan said the city has used temporary coronavirus funding to pay for many services.

"We should be clear that it is inaccurate and careless and sometimes dangerous to infer that our current financial circumstances are solely the result of increased cost from the asylum seeker response," he said.

Adams, the speaker, asked Jiha why city officials have largely depended on costly for-profit companies rather than nonprofits to provide services for asylum seekers.

"The not-for-profits didn't have the physical infrastructure and the financial wherewithal to deal with this," he said.

Council Member Shekar Krishnan was among many lawmakers who criticized the logic behind many cuts.

"It's shocking the choices you have chosen to make," he said. "That's the problem."