Progressive Pols and Advocates Oppose Budget Cut

Critics say budget doesn’t need 15 percent cuts

By Matthew Fischetti

[email protected]

 

Lefty politicians and advocates gathered outside City Hall last week to denounce the Mayor’s proposed 15 percent budget cuts across all city agencies next year.

Hizzoner has said that the cuts are necessary due to the lack of total support from the feds and Albany in addition to COVID aid funds are running out of steam.

While Adams believes the across the board cuts are necessary to deal with the city’s finances, electeds at Tuesday’s press conference said they believed there were a range of options to stave off the cuts.

Specifically, they proposed implementing a package of reforms to the CityFHEPS program, a rental assistance program, which the mayor vetoed and the city council overrode back in July. The proposed reforms would make a series of changes to the voucher program including eligibility by changing the requirement to qualify for the program from 200 percent of the federal poverty level to 50 percent the area median income. The package of legislation, which includes four bills, is estimated to cost $17 billion over the next five years, which was the Mayor’s reasoning for vetoing the package.

(Adams axed a rule that required people to stay in homeless shelters for 90 days in order to qualify for the vouchers, which was one of the four pieces of reforms proposed by the council.)

“There’s one thing we have learned in 20 months of an Eric Adams mayoralty, it’s that this man says crazy stuff every damn day. But let’s ignore the crazy stuff he says and focus on the crazy stuff that he’s doing,” Progressive Caucus Co-Chair and Greenpoint Councilman Lincoln Restler said at the rally.

“He has already cut billions of dollars from the city budget. Our services have been obliterated. People can’t access federally funded food stamps. People can’t access cash assistance. People with housing vouchers placed in apartments can’t actually get into their homes, because we don’t have the staff. And what does the Mayor want to do? Cut. And cut. And cut,” Restler continued.

Attendee from last week’s rally against the Mayor’s proposed budget cuts. Credit: Gerardo Romo NYC Council Media Unit

 

Additionally, state legislators and members of the council’s Progressive Caucus who attended the rally also advocated for increasing state taxes on the wealthy, getting additional funding from the state and federal government and expedited federal work authorizations. (Gov. Hochul has been reportedly considering state work permits for migrants while federal work permit authorization has stalled in Washington.)

“Eric Adams should be looking towards other opportunities in terms of how New York should increase its revenue instead of looking toward budget cuts. Year in and year out, for the past two years that Mayor Adams has been in office, he’s looked towards budget cuts prior to the migrants being here and prior to this being a crisis. Mayor Adams should be looking towards solutions of increasing the amount of money that we could be raising,” Bed-Stuy Councilman Chi Ossé said at the rally.

Ossé raised the idea of establishing a pied-à-terre tax on the ultra wealthy, which is a tax on rental properties that aren’t the primary residence of the owner. New York State Senator Brad Holyman originally sponsored a pied-à-terre tax in Albany back in 2014.

A May study from the Comptroller’s office estimates that a combined policy that would repeal Madison Square Garden’s tax free status, a partial repeal of coop-condo abatements and a luxury pied-à-terre tax could increase city revenue by an approximate $400 million per year. Within the same report, the Comptroller’s office estimates that a luxury pied-à-terre surcharge could net up to $277 million within the first year and $239 million within its third year of implementation.

Ossé also suggested that the mayor could hire more auditors to better collect revenue as a possible solution to the problem that doesn’t require austerity measures.

Attendees at the rally also casted doubt on the projected cost of migrant arrivals being the driving factor behind the mayor’s austerity measures.

“Lastly, with these cuts, I want to be clear, the mayor’s administration has proposed cuts to the budget long before the migrants got here. So to pretend the migrants are the reason to propose cuts is disingenuous at best,” Public Advocate Jumaane Williams said at the rally.

Some groups such as the non-partisan Fiscal Policy Institute have estimated that the proposed budget impact from the mayor’s office is overblown.

Bed-Stuy Councilman Chi Ossé speaking about potential tax revenues like the pied-à-terre

“The City estimates the total cost for asylum seekers over 2024 and 2025 is $10.9 billion — however, the City’s portion of the cost for asylum seekers over 2024 and 2025 is $8.9 billion, of which $2.4 billion was already budgeted for in the adopted budget. This puts the City’s new funding need at $6.5 billion over the next two years: $2.3 billion in 2024 and $4.1 billion in 2025. The proposed budget cuts of $10 billion per year are billions of dollars higher than the increased cost estimates for asylum seekers,” Executive Director Nathan Gusdorf said in a statement.

The rally also coincided with the recently established 60-day deadline for single adult migrants without children to vacate city shelters. If a migrant wants to stay in the shelter after that time period they must reapply.

“This mayor has attempted to eliminate the right to shelter, has broken our promise of ensuring that New York City is not run with street homelessness by adding directing like the 60 day rule,” Progressive Caucus Co-Chair and chair of the Immigration Committee Shahana Hanif said at the rally.

Hanif continued to criticize the possible implementation of a 30 day rule, which would cut the stay time for single adult migrants to 30 days rather than 60. The Adams administration is currently considering the possible rule, according to the New York Post.

“Those policies are terrible, unjust and violent,” said the Park Slope councilwoman.

City agencies will submit plans to cut an initial five percent of costs in the coming November budget update and will be required to find additional five percent cuts by the time the preliminary report comes out in January and an additional five percent in cuts submitted by the release of the executive budget in April. The final adopted budget must be reached before July 1 after negotiating with the council throughout May and June.

BK — the progressive way

CM Shahana Hanif has been named one of the co-chairs of the progressive caucus (Credit CM Hanif’s office).

By Matthew Fischetti

[email protected]

 

New York City Councilman Lincoln Restler and Councilwoman Shahana Hanif aren’t cut from the same cloth.

Restler got his start with reform-oriented politics by co-founding the New Kings Democrats – a group that helps elected transparency-oriented leaders. Then he beat the Brooklyn machine in an unusually high profile race for District Leader before working for the De Blasio administration.

Hanif served as director for community engagement and organizing for then-Councilman Brad Lander’s office. But that’s exactly why they think they’ll be good co-chairs of the New York City council progressive caucus.

“I come from a more leftist, Democratic Socialist tenant organizing background, while also having navigated leading participatory budgeting and community engagement in my predecessor, Brad Lander’s office. And then he worked for the de Blasio administration. So we’ve got really two diverse track records, which I think really allows for a blossoming relationship and partnership,” Hanif said.

The New York City caucus was formed in 2009 and has gone through a few different iterations under the previous three different speakers and two mayors it has existed.

“It was a more contentious dynamic between the Progressive Caucus, Speaker Quinn, and Mayor Bloomberg. It was a much closer partnership with Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, who is one of the co-founders and original co-chairs of the caucus. The caucus perhaps played a less behind-the-scenes role during the Corey Johnson era,” Restler said.

CM Lincoln Restler has been named as a co-chair of the progressive caucus.

Hanif echoed similar sentiments, describing the previous progressive caucus under Diane Ayala and Ben Kalos as “dim and dead” and that now was a great opportunity to resuscitate the caucus as an “accountability machine” to the mayor.

When the caucus was founded it only had 12 members but this year has over 30 In the most historically diverse class of legislators yet with a high number of progressive-minded legislators. The caucus features some high-profile names like Majority Whip Councilwoman Selvena N. Brooks-Powers, Finance Chair Justin Brannan and even Council Speaker Adrienne Adams.

This caucus will be a “big tent progressive caucus,” as Restler described it, with a range of ideologies from more DSA styled members to center-left liberal reformers. Both chairs emphasized having robust dialogue and debate in order to ensure different versions of being progressive can be embodied in the work the caucus does going forward.

The progressive caucus is ready to flex its muscles under the more moderate Mayor Adams administration. Before he was even elected, Mayor Adams said that city council members who opposed solitary confinement had no desire to move the city forward but to simply be disruptive. After Mayor Adams released his preliminary budget, which includes a series of budget cuts, progressive members have attended rallies to fight against them.

Restler has emphasized that while challenging the Mayor on issues they disagree with is part of his responsibility as an independently elected representative that going to “nuclear war” with the mayor won’t help anybody. When Hanif was asked about some of the things she envisions being able to work on the Mayor with she paused.

“I guess that’s a tougher question for me,” Hanif said before laughing. “We haven’t necessarily articulated this in the caucus yet but, I think the mayor’s position on food justice in schools is something that I support and want to improve. But at this moment, with the preliminary budget out and seeing that nearly every single agency is seeing a reduction in funding, it is really tough to see where there’s alignment right now.”

Later in her interview with the Brooklyn Downtown Star, Hanif qualified her statement by saying she wants room for debate and dialogue with the Mayor, as she wants for internal disagreements within the caucus, but still said the mayor’s policy decisions so far will make that a harder possibility.

In order to really build power and be a true accountability machine against the mayor, Hanif said just having a high membership rate won’t cut it.

“Something that the leadership has been in active conversation around in whether we see value in having quantity or do we see value in really ushering in a caucus that is very deliberate about some working groups that we’ve identified? We really want participation, we want this to be an effective caucus,” Hanif said.

Hanif said that the working groups – covering topics like the budget, communication, policy and bylaws – are a measure to ensure that members are there in just name only but are actively helping the caucus.

Restler will be leading the principles of statement and bylaws group, Hanif is running the communication group, vice-chair Carmen De La Rosa will be in charge of the policy group, and the other vice-chair Jennifer Gutiérrez will be taking the helm on the budget.

Hanif and Restler also said they would consider booting members from the caucus if they don’t participate enough.

Hanif also emphasized that it will take an inside-outside strategy working with unions, outside groups like the Working Families Party and DSA, as well as community activists and organizers to build an adequate coalition that can secure wins.

The legislative agenda has yet to be finalized as the first meeting of the progressive caucus won’t be until April 1. In talks with members, Restler said that treating housing and healthcare as a human right is near the top of priorities for the caucus and that they hope to create “a budget agenda that advances our goals of housing justice, environmental justice, and racial justice.”

Hanif said that the top issues she heard from members surround creating a just budget and divesting money from the police budget.

“My hope is that we can lean into areas of common ground with the speaker and the mayor to successfully advance a robust agenda that delivers for New Yorkers,” Restler said. “We’re independently elected council members and it’s our collective prerogative to represent the values of our districts and we are going to craft an agenda that that does just that.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

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