Mayor Eric Adams shakes fingers with Metropolis Council Speaker Adrienne Adams after saying an settlement on town’s $115.9 billion FY 2026 finances at Metropolis Corridor.
Photograph by Lloyd Mitchell
Mayor Eric Adams will present $14.8 million in funds to offer free house owner trash bins — a transfer according to laws enacted by the Metropolis Council in March — regardless of a Saturday report within the New York Publish that he would refuse to take action on the grounds that the invoice handed was “fiscally irresponsible.”
The Mayor’s workplace claims that the Metropolis Council ought to have taken duty for funding laws it handed final yr to offer free trash bins to eligible householders in New York Metropolis as a part of town’s broader push for trash containerization and its “war on rats.” The laws handed the Council unanimously and took impact mechanically when Mayor Adams didn’t take motion to veto or signal it.
From the Metropolis Council’s perspective, it made its funding priorities clear to the Mayor’s staff throughout finances negotiations, and maintains that it’s customary process for the Mayor to search out mandated Metropolis Corridor funding for enacted legal guidelines.
First Deputy Press Secretary for the Mayor Liz Garcia wrote in a press release to New York News that the Adams administration would “be investing $14 million toward providing free bins to qualifying New Yorkers in one- and two-unit properties, which will help push our containerization efforts even further and continue to drive down rat populations.”
“While the City Council chose not to fund their own law, the Adams administration will always invest in working-class New Yorkers, and we look forward to continuing to win the war on rats,” Garcia wrote.
A spokesperson for Mayor Adams informed New York News that the Metropolis Council by no means made it clear to the Mayor that the laws was not already funded within the adopted fiscal yr 2026 metropolis finances, nor that the funding was a precedence for the Council or that the funding wanted to come back from Metropolis Corridor.
Nonetheless, the Metropolis Council countered that its members had made all these realities clear to Adams’ staff throughout finances negotiations and that the initiative was meant to be coated by the finances’s $32 million everlasting addition to Division of Sanitation funding.
“Eric Adams has failed to personally, meaningfully engage in the budget process during his tenure as mayor,” mentioned Metropolis Council Member Lincoln Restler (D-Brooklyn). “So the idea that he didn’t know what was a council priority, or the notion that he was unaware of what was a council priority, surprises me not in the slightest.”
The Council had certainly made its wishes for the funding public throughout finances negotiations in Might.
The New York Publish reported Saturday that Mayor Adams wouldn’t “sign off” on the $14.8 million in funding required to fulfill the brand new program’s mandate. Although the Council handed the laws unanimously, ruling out a mayoral veto, the mayor might alert the Metropolis Council {that a} given mandate would go unfunded attributable to an absence of funds.
Mayor Adams has beforehand criticized the laws, enacted in March, for being fiscally irresponsible. As a substitute of utilizing New York State’s STAR Program as a metric for eligibility for the free bins, Mayor Adams has as a substitute advocated for a program that makes use of New York Metropolis metrics.
“When this law was being considered, our administration was clear with the council that these programs are state-run programs — and we therefore do not have data on enrollment that could help with providing bins,” Garcia wrote in her assertion to the New York Publish, which Garcia shared with New York News. “However, we proposed an alternative city program to determine who could receive free bins, and that was rejected.”
Although Mayor Adams has criticized the funding, a spokesperson informed New York News that the workplace by no means mentioned it might not present the funding.
“It is unfortunate that the City Council irresponsibly passed an unfunded law and then did not prioritize funding for it during our recent budget negotiations,” Garcia wrote in her assertion to the Publish. “We will continue to work to provide the most affordable options to New Yorkers and send the rats packing out of our city.”
Restler mentioned that, although the Mayor claims he was unaware of the Council’s precedence, Mayor Adams “didn’t lift a finger to express an ounce of opposition” throughout finances negotiations.
“He just complains incoherently in the press about an initiative that’s supposedly a priority of his administration,” Restler mentioned.
Mayor Adams has made the “war on rats” a central mark of his time in workplace. In June, he introduced that West Harlem had turn into the primary neighborhood in New York Metropolis to achieve 100% trash containerization following a profitable pilot program.
The March laws authorized by the Council goals to offer New Yorkers in want of monetary help with free trash bins to allow them to adjust to new containerization legal guidelines.
“As New York City’s legislative branch, the City Council writes the laws,” Metropolis Council Member Justin Brannan (D-Brooklyn) wrote in a press release to New York News. “As the executive branch, it’s the Mayor’s job to administer and enforce the laws we pass. There’s a veto process if the mayor disagrees with a law we’ve passed. No veto? Then you need to enforce the law. All of the laws we pass are priorities for us or else we wouldn’t pass them. Now it seems City Hall is now looking for a pat on the back for doing their job as per the charter. Not interested.”
Council spokesperson Julia Agos wrote in a press release to New York News that the “mayor’s office is claiming it doesn’t know the laws of the city they are responsible for running, so they’re either lying or admitting incompetence.”
“Either way, it is a disgrace to all New Yorkers,” Agos wrote. “With affordability as the top issue facing our city’s residents, Mayor Adams’ administration should stop denying support to New Yorkers who need assistance affording the trash containers his administration mandated.”
