The Budget, the Legal Fund, and Two Vetoes
Who gave to the Eric Adams Legal Defense Trust? Will the mayor's vetoes stick? #69 (don't say it)
The mayor at the REBNY gala, questioning why these real estate developers hadn’t talked about a police accountability bill earlier.
Mayor Eric Adams vetoed two council bills a few hours ago, a police reporting accountability bill, and a ban on solitary confinement. They are the third and fourth vetoes in his tenure.
The mayor was vocally opposed to both, which were passed by the City Council at the very end of 2023 in a veto-proof majority. Interestingly he held a large rally and then a press conference to announce his veto of the How Many Stops bill, which requires police officers keep a record of all stops, even the smallest interactions known as level 1. Backed by New Yorkers and union and business leaders, he talked about public safety — and the ways in which this will further jam up cops with paperwork instead of police work.
The solitary ban veto came quietly a few hours later, in a press release.
The council vows to override the vetoes, like they did with the CityFHEPs bill. It’s now a numbers game — can the mayor and his team convince new members to vote against them and flip those who did?
I wondered why the mayor and his team didn’t do more of this publish pushing before the vote. POLITICO reported the mayor even took his talking points to some kid David’s bar mitzvah (this tweet was very funny) after the vote. And on Thursday, he antagonized REBNY members at their own annual gala, asking why they haven’t engaged on the issue.
A City Hall official said I was looking at it all wrong. Why do that public stuff while negotiating? They were trying to work with the council to get this bill where they’d like it to be, but it didn’t happen — and here comes the hard stuff. But then a City Council official told me there wasn’t any real negotiating, and the mayor’s going to lose even worse on the veto override vote with council members looking to stand up to their legislation. I have no idea what’s going to happen, so this will fall under the “we shall see” category.
You can read more about the vetoes here, and here’s an excerpt from my colleague Reuven Blau (and Graham Rayman’s) book on Rikers Island.
LEGAL DEFENSE FUND
On Tuesday, we all anxiously awaited the release of not only the mayor’s most recent campaign filings but the list of who donated to his legal defense fund, which he set up to help pay for lawyers and discovery and anything else dealing with his FBI “inquiries.”
They were all released Tuesday afternoon, right around the time we got the mayor’s preliminary budget (more on that later.) The mayor’s team raised $730,000 to help pay for everything, with donations from crypto billionaires and regular folks alike.
Here’s a roundup of stories about the fund:
On questionable donations [HELLGATE]
On the billionaires [DAILY NEWS]
Oh, Mike Bloomberg also gave [NYT]
And here’s an interesting story on the mayor’s campaign treasurer whose home was raided by the FBI, and who was working on commission [POLITICO]
And for fun, my colleague Greg Smith wrote about one of the mayor’s favorite restaurants, owned by the police commissioner’s brother [THE CITY]
OH, RIGHT, THE BUDGET
I failed the Math B regents three times, so this was not a good week for me.
So many numbers, all in one day, and a lot of confusion about New York City’s financial outlook.
We got a preview of it last week as the mayor began rolling back some of his previous November cuts. And then Tuesday, the fuller picture — better than expected revenue, no recession as feared, strong management, some belt tightening all meant the doom-and-gloom we feared in November was mostly gone. I wrote the day-of story with my colleague Greg David, who then got to the crux of it all in a follow-up story.
He writes:
The Independent Budget Office, other fiscal watchdogs and the City Council all took into account the better-than-expected economy and foresaw much smaller gaps to be closed. The Council, for example, argued immediately there would be more tax revenue and in early December said it would amount to at least $1.2 billion.
“It was an error and they did this consciously,” said Louisa Chafee, director of the IBO. “It was a choice they made.”
Meanwhile the specific approach on how to cut the budget was unusual and sowed confusion about the scale of the problem and the impact.
New York City is not out of the woods yet, the mayor likes to remind us. And he swears New Yorkers aren’t confused by it all (I am.) Could this new sunshine over the city’s fiscal future jeopardize any more federal or state help?
I think you know what I’m going to say:
We shall see!
But before you go, the City Hall steps re-opened, now with a brass bannister (that is removable.)
Thanks for reading!