Mayor Adams and City Comptroller Brad Lander agreed during a rare joint appearance Thursday that the city must come up with ways to secure more budget savings as a cloud of concerning fiscal trends loom on the horizon — but the political rivals were light on details about how to pull that off.
Adams and Lander, who are facing off against each other in next year’s mayoral election, voiced their shared concern during the annual meeting of the Financial Control Board, a state entity created during the 1970s financial crisis that must by law each year review the city’s four-year budget plan.
Adams pointed in particular to what he described as “essentially flat” city tax revenues in the 2024 fiscal year as a reason why additional fiscal restraint will be required going forward. Without restraint, he warned massive budget gaps could open up down the road that would force drastic measures like mass layoffs of public employees, a step some other U.S. municipalities have taken recently amid economic downturns.
“We’re going to continue to be fiscally smart because we made the tough decisions early and managed our way to stable fiscal positions,” Adams said, referring to his “Programs to Eliminate the Gap,” which caused several unpopular city budget cuts in 2023 and 2024, like public libraries being forced to end seven-day service.
Lander, who sat next to Adams during the meeting, told The News later he interpreted the mayor’s comment about remaining “fiscally smart” as an indication more PEGs could be coming.
The comptroller said more PEGs would be wrong, warning they could result in a repetition of this year’s “budget dance” whereby funding was stripped from some agencies for months only to later on be restored after negotiations with the City Council.
Still, Lander agreed savings must be allocated.
“I wholeheartedly agree: You need to plan for savings,” he said.
Lander said that’s especially important due to slow growth in some local job sectors, including technology and finance, which could adversely impact tax revenues, as well as the Adams administration’s pattern of under-budgeting some spending, including NYPD overtime and city contributions to the MTA.
Instead of PEGs, Lander argued a better way to address spending would be requiring agencies to draw up savings plans at the start of every budget season.
“You want to do that as part of the regular budget process, not just ‘presto’ when the mayor pulls it out of a hat,” he said.
Lander did not say how much in savings such efforts could produce or whether it’d be enough to close city budget gaps projected for future fiscal years.
All in all, Adams said at Thursday’s meeting that the city’s finances remain “strong” considering the economic challenges it faces. He did have one complaint, though.
“The city must become more affordable,” he said, adding his administration has work left to do on addressing spiraling housing costs, in particular.
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