A few months ago, Mayor Eric Adams called for a number of contentious, anxiety-producing cuts to the New York City budget, slashing funds meant for schools and cultural institutions, among other things.
On Wednesday, the mayor had a different message: Never mind.
Citing better than expected tax revenue and his administration’s fiscal management, Mr. Adams proposed a revised $111.6 billion budget, identifying an additional $2.3 billion that would restore some of the more worrisome cuts.
The mayor’s reversal earned praise from organizations dependent on city funding, even as it fed criticism that his budgeting practices were opaque, overly conservative and detrimental to governance.
The City Council, Independent Budget Office and city comptroller have maintained for months that Mr. Adams’s fiscal projections were incorrect, and did not account for better than expected revenue projections. Based on the mayor’s numbers, his administration saw the need to make cuts to libraries and schools.
“We’re pleased with the restorations, but we maintain blunt cuts weren’t necessary in the first place,” said Justin Brannan, a councilman who represents southern Brooklyn and is the chairman of the Council’s Finance Committee. “The chaos and stress those proposed cuts caused were very real.”
Mr. Adams saw things differently, praising his administration’s fiscal prudence in light of the influx of roughly 190,000 migrants and asylum seekers to the city. He said efforts to cut hundreds of millions of dollars in costs related to migrants allowed the city to use that money to fund its priorities, including affordable housing, child care and hiring more police officers, without resorting to more drastic measures such as tax increases or layoffs.
“As soon as we saw the hurdles ahead, we responded swiftly, strategically, with a healthy dose of caution,” the mayor said during a virtual address Wednesday on the budget. “We made smart choices, trimmed agency and asylum seeker budgets and made conservative revenue forecasts. This, combined with better than expected revenues and a booming economy, resulted in a balanced budget.”
Not all of the mayor’s cuts have been unwound. In November, Mr. Adams announced painful cuts that, among others things, ended Sunday library services. The budget he released Wednesday did not restore that library funding.
“We did not tell libraries to close on Sundays,” Mr. Adams said on Wednesday. “They had the options of finding where they wanted to find those savings.”
The leaders of the New York, Brooklyn and Queens public library systems expressed disappointment that the budget had “failed to reverse devastating cuts proposed for public libraries in January.”
“We’ve already lost seven-day service citywide, and are looking at most branches being open for only five days a week should these cuts go through,” the leaders wrote in a joint statement on Wednesday.
Some of the mayor’s restorations of his own budget cuts have been publicized separately, with Mr. Adams holding news conferences to celebrate new police classes and renewed support for children’s summer programming.
Last week, he announced that the city would temporarily replace some expiring federal pandemic dollars that had been used for prekindergarten programs with a commitment of city funds.
“Every child who wants a seat will have access to one,” Mr. Adams vowed on Wednesday, repeating the line twice for good effect.
Child care advocates said the mayor’s budget presented an incomplete picture. Rebecca Bailin, executive director of New Yorkers United for Child Care, said the mayor had cut $400 million intended for such programs, so it was unclear if he could deliver on his promise.
“We’ll see,” Ms. Bailin said.
The budget still requires approval by the City Council.
The back-and-forth budgeting practices have also earned criticism from finance experts. The Citizens Budget Commission, a nonpartisan but typically hawkish watchdog group, last week faulted the mayor for revenue estimates that were “unreasonably conservative,” even as it also criticized him for “spending estimates for current programs that are alarmingly understated.”
“Making budget decisions based on unrealistic estimates, like flying a plane with a broken altimeter, increases the chance of a crash,” the report said.
