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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. The New York State budget might still be snagged on the issues of charter schools and how to deal with illegal cannabis sales, but Mayor Adams isn't going to let it impact the release of his executive budget for the City of New York. It's the first time in a decade that we have an executive budget for the city without a state budget in place.

Now, after mounting pressure to back off, the mayor announced yesterday that he would spare additional budget cuts to New York City's public libraries. He's going to hold the libraries harmless, a move that would've forced, if there were cuts, many to close their branches on the weekends. That was seen as likely to be the main effect. His revised plan, as I say, released yesterday, scales back on other city agencies, however, parks, sanitation, fire, homeless services. Here's what he had to say.

Mayor Adams: Our goal is always to streamline operations so that agencies can continue to deliver the same or higher level of services efficiently. The savings accomplished in this budget did not impact services or result in layoffs.

Brian Lehrer: Adams' executive budget proposal now gets reviewed by the City Council, and they negotiate with each other by the time the city's new fiscal year begins, July 1st. Ahead of the pending release yesterday of the mayor's executive budget, public advocate Jumaane Williams spoke at the launch of the True Cost of Living in NYC report for 2023. It found that half of New York City families are no longer able to afford what they call the minimum cost of living in the city.

Joining us now to discuss the budget, the good news for libraries, and what it means for the City Council and mayor to negotiate the final budget for all the other agencies before the state budget is finished, is Elizabeth Kim, reporter who covers mayoral power for the People and Power team at Gothamist and WNYC news. Hey, Liz, welcome back to the show.

Elizabeth Kim: Good morning, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Let's start with the very basic number, the mayor's spending plan for the next fiscal year is $106.7 billion, about $107 billion. That would be the largest in the city's history. It's $4 billion more than the preliminary budget he put forth in January, which enables him to spare a few agencies that had cuts on the chopping block. I've already seen some criticism from a maybe more fiscal watchdog kind of corner that says, "Wait, the mayor is talking about fiscally tougher times ahead in New York City, but he's having the city spend more than it's spent ever before?" Can you talk about the topline number to start out?

Elizabeth Kim: Sure. The additional spending is driven by a couple factors. One is actually very good news. The city is projecting an additional $2 billion in tax revenues next year. The other two factors are what you can call-- well, one is probably seen as a big fiscal risk, and that's migrant spending. The city says that there have been 57,000 migrants from the southern border that have come to the city last year, and that over 35,000 are currently in the city's care. Now, what does that mean? That means that the city is providing them with shelter, food, health services, and in some cases, education.

They're saying that that cost over the next two years is going to hit the city's budget with over $4 billion. That is also causing the city to project that it needs to spend more. Then the other factor is union contracts. We all knew that, given the fact that most of the unions have expired contracts, that the mayor was going to start striking deals, and that that was going to hit the budget in a very, very big way. The city usually has some money in reserves for labor contracts, but usually, it's not enough, given inflation and the kind of raises that unions wanted this year. That also added to the amount of spending that the city had to make.

Brian Lehrer: Let me follow up on what you said about the migrant influx. You're right, city officials estimate the migrant crisis will cost taxpayers over $4 billion by 2025. You just cited that number. The city currently anticipates $1.6 billion of that sum will come from state and federal aid. Let's listen to what the mayor had to say about that yesterday.

Mayor Adams: Even if our optimistic projections are met, state and federal aid will cover just under 40% of our cost, leaving New Yorkers to pay the rest.

Brian Lehrer: Can you talk a bit about this tension between the city and the state on the migrant crisis? Because the state hasn't figured out yet how much money they will allocate to the city for this as the state, as we said, is still undergoing its own budget negotiations for the fiscal year that already started on April 1st, and they're deadlocked over a bunch of things. We know that this has been Mayor Adams' stated number one priority for what he wants from Albany for the budget. Do you have any tea leaves as if he's going to get it? Even if he does get $1.6 billion, that still leaves several billion to get elsewhere.

Elizabeth Kim: Exactly. I think that it's fair to say that this is the mayor's biggest fiscal challenge. The tension isn't just with the state, it's also with the federal government. The question is, how much does the state give? Kathy Hochul had proposed this formula of one-third, one-third, one-third, meaning that the state chips in one-third, the federal government chips in one-third, and then the city covers the remaining one-third. As we know, the state budget is still being hammered out, but I think the one-third from the federal government, that's really a question mark there.

There is aid that is currently available, it's around $800 million in emergency aid, but that's for all cities. The city is still unclear on how much of that aid it will receive. Then there's the bigger question. Once that pot gets used up, then is there going to be forthcoming aid with a House that's controlled by Republicans? Can New York City expect to get future aid? This is a big issue that the mayor has been trying to hammer home as he shapes his financial plan for the city, is that there is uncertainty around how long will this crisis last and what kind of aid from both the state and the federal government the city can expect to receive in the coming years?

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, anybody want to weigh in on or ask a question about Mayor Adams' executive budget for New York City? There's a lot at stake here. I always say this when we do budget segments. The budget is not just for accountants and greenshade wonks to go over numbers. This is where policy is made. Budgets are policy. Budgets are priorities. Budgets are how much money goes into what that affect people's lives all over the city, all over the state, all over the country. If anybody has a question or a comment on Mayor Adams' executive budget proposal or what he's up against with City Council or with what City Council is up against with him, 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692.

Two of the largest spending items you note are composting and an initiative called B-HEARD, which you write, sends a special team of medical and mental health responders to respond to 911 calls instead of police. They're both seen as progressive issues, composting and B-HEARD. How much would they get in new money? Of course, these aren't the biggest items in the budget, but they're among the biggest new items in the budget. Why is the mayor prioritizing them?

Elizabeth Kim: Well, they're getting both around over $20 million. When I was going through some of the new investments, I was looking at new investments that were getting something over $20 million, and those stood out to me. Composting, it's interesting, because in his first budget, as you may remember, he proposed a cut to composting, and that created a huge public outcry, especially among people who said that the city needed to do better on sustainability. I think, in response to that, the mayor has made some more investments in terms of reducing the city's carbon footprint. That is in line with something I think that is popular with the public, and also a policy goal of the mayor's.

With respect to B-HEARD, again, as you said, that is a program that has been favored by progressives as an alternative to expanding police when it comes to 911 calls that involve someone who appears to be in a mental health crisis. I think that it would be hard too for the mayor not to increase funding for a program like that when that seems to be a national trend, you hear about a lot of other cities doing something similar. It doesn't quite surprise me that that was an initiative that the mayor singled out to raise funding for.

Brian Lehrer: The thing that made headlines about his executive budget proposal, maybe more headlines than it's worth, is that he will spare libraries from cuts. Let's take a listen to 10 seconds of what he said about that.

Mayor Adams: We exempted them from this [unintelligible 00:11:12] That is right. We did not cut a single penny from libraries and cultural institutions in this plan.

Brian Lehrer: The reason I say maybe it's getting too much attention, too much positive attention is, Liz, you've been through this for a number of years now. There seems to be this dance almost every year where whoever the mayor is, proposed cuts to libraries, people go, "No cuts to libraries," and then they restore the cuts. Is this just a little bit of theater that was never real?

Elizabeth Kim: You're exactly right. In talking about the budget dance, I think it's important for people to understand, why does the mayor and City Council do this big battle over something like libraries? The cynical answer is, is because by making a cut to something, a popular institution like the library, he is going to prompt a huge outcry from the public, and lawmakers respecting their constituents are going to fight very hard to restore that funding.

Then think about it, if you have City Council members expending all of this energy and time on getting, let's say, $17 million back for the libraries, what are they not spending their time on looking at when it comes to the city's budget and policy priorities? That is the cynical view of why is there this budget dance every year with the libraries, but yet, yes, once again, we have a budget dance and it involves the libraries.

Brian Lehrer: What do you see at this point as the biggest difference between the mayor and the more progressive, generally, City Council on the budget?

Elizabeth Kim: Well, right now, the mayor made that statement that not a single penny was taken from the libraries. Reporters pressed him on that yesterday, and it is disingenuous if not inaccurate. The libraries are still facing a hole. What he did was he shrank the hole, but even with a $36 million hole, so he shrank the hole from $53 million to $36 million, but what library leaders will tell you is that $36 million is still very real. That deficit is still very real to them, and that could still jeopardize hours of service and programming.

In defense of libraries, they don't just serve people who want to borrow books. Here is where progressives make, I think, a very compelling argument. The library today performs a lot of other functions. Think about free classes to learn English, programming for teens and very young children. During the summer, they're a place for New Yorkers to go who don't have air conditioning. If you think about Mayor Adams saying that he wants to create a fiscal plan or a financial plan that supports working-class New Yorkers, progressives in the City Council will say libraries are exact-- then it means that you should exactly fund libraries because this is the exact kind of institution that supports working-class New Yorkers.

Brian Lehrer: Stu in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hi, Stu.

Stu: Hi.

Brian Lehrer: Go ahead.

Stu: You want me to say [unintelligible 00:14:49]

Brian Lehrer: Yes.

Stu: Everybody talks about the expense part of the budget, but nobody talks about the income part. New York City has practically a flat tax. I think it's like a 1/2% difference between under 50,000 and 10 million. That started with Giuliani and Pataki, they flattened the tax. Given the amount of billionaires we have in New York City, which I think is more than any in the country, perhaps in the world, I think just a small increase might help the budget a great deal.

Brian Lehrer: Stu, thank you. Does the mayor talk about raising taxes on the rich?

Elizabeth Kim: That's not something that the mayor can do, that's something that needs to be done in Albany. The question that you can put to the mayor is, will you raise property taxes? He has maintained that he does not want to raise any type of tax, local tax.

Brian Lehrer: Charles on the Upper West Side, wants to bring up something that a few callers are mentioning. Charles, you're going to represent a couple of you here. Hi.

Charles: Thanks so much, Brian, it's been a while. I just wanted to say that I think that when the police were fighting over their budget with the mayor and their unions, when Trump came to town, he made a lot of threats and because Adams was a policeman, I think that led to him being more partial to giving them what they wanted. That also had something to do with the budget that we have now.

I also think that when you have been a city that we are, welcoming migrants, it's a very expensive city, and even New Yorkers find it hard to exist in it. At some point, you have to look at what it's costing us, and at some point, you have to learn how to say no, and then use your brain and try to figure it out, because when it keeps coming in, the answers to actually get a hold on it get harder to make a decision. I think that he's got to come to terms with that. I think de Blasio was very good at looking at things. I'm not saying he can't. I don't think he has insight like de Blasio had to actually look at something and say no to it. I think that he's got to learn to say no.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you. I think Adams says no to a lot of people, and I wouldn't demean his insight, in general, he may come to different decisions than de Blasio did. Liz, it's interesting to get from the same caller concern about the spending on migrants and concerned about spending on the police. Let's talk about the police budget for a second, because that's always a hot button in City Council. We just had many members leave the Progressive Caucus of City Council because they're calling for cuts in the police budget. Where is the mayor on that, and where is City Council?

Elizabeth Kim: Well, the police budget is relatively, I would say, the same. It's probably a little bit less, but it's roughly as it has been around $6 billion. It's interesting that after progressives made that stand, the Progressive Caucus, I should have said, made that stand that they wanted to make shrinking the police budget one of their core principles, and then as a result, they lost some members. Since that time, actually, there hasn't really been, I would say, sustained discussion about the police budget. In fact, a lot of the attention has turned to other things like the libraries and how much is Adams cutting the library budget? How much is he cutting from schools?

I think it's interesting, and I don't know if part of that is because like we said, this is part of the budget dance in which the council members, in effect, are always responding to where the mayor makes cuts, rather than maybe responding to where he's making investments. I think that it's interesting there. The mayor, as a sidebar during his press conference yesterday, complained that he felt the public and critics just make too much of the size of police OT. It was a very interesting commentary he made, he thought it was unfair. He's like, "Why does the public seem to single out how much the police make in overtime? I don't see the same kind of scrutiny being put to other city workers." As we know, it's about the scale of the OT and also reports that it is an abuse. I think that was the answer, but I think the mayor feels differently.

Brian Lehrer: Last thing, and we're not really going to have time to explore this now, but I anticipate that there's going to be more focus on this in the coming weeks because there was last year after the budget got passed, and there was a big backlash on this, and that is education spending. The education site Chalkbeat is reporting that these efficiencies, as the mayor calls them, might hit the Education Department pretty hard. They report the city's Education Department budget would drop by nearly 960 million next school year. Now that's out of about 30 billion, I believe, but still dropping by nearly a billion dollars is a big loss. Have you looked into this at all? Do you expect it to be a hot button in the coming weeks, the school's budget?

Elizabeth Kim: Absolutely. I spent the morning just scrutinizing the education budget. The roughly $960 million that the Education Department would drop by is actually not the next school year. It's actually this current fiscal year. Next year, we're looking at a drop of $1.1 billion.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, in addition.

Elizabeth Kim: Altogether it's quite a lot. What accounts for the loss in the coming fiscal year, about half of that is from the loss of federal stimulus funding. That was something that the mayor and city officials had talked a lot about, along with budget watchdogs, the so-called fiscal cliff that we were hitting because we're losing federal aid, federal stimulus aid from the pandemic is drying up, so that becomes a reality. That makes up about half of the loss in funding for next year. I've been trying to break down the remainder costs.

I reached out to the mayor's office, and they told me that several hundred million is from, so-called, savings that they've been able to achieve from lowering healthcare costs and other so-called fringe benefits. It's basically less than anticipated spending. I don't think that that can be attributed to all of this because it's still a huge-- hundreds of millions of dollars that the city will be contributing less to education. We just don't really know what it is yet. I think that that is something that I'm sure the City Council will be grilling education officials about as they start holding hearings.

Brian Lehrer: No doubt. One piece of the budget that we'll obviously be covering more here as well as other parts of the budget. We leave it there for today with Elizabeth Kim, reporter who covers mayoral power for the People and Power team at Gothamist and WNYC news. Liz, thanks as always.

Elizabeth Kim: Thanks so much, Brian.

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