Mayor Eric Adams proposed a surprisingly sunny $115.1 billion budget on Thursday, making new investments to create a universal K-5 after-school program and increase police headcount even as experts urge restraint to prepare for federal aid cuts and a possible recession.
The revised executive budget for Fiscal Year 2026 is a modest increase from the preliminary $114.5 billion plan Adams proposed in January. Rebuffing watchdogs’ warnings, it adds no money to the city’s reserves or rainy-day fund despite projecting slowing tax revenues and potential economic hits from President Donald Trump’s tariff and immigration policies; it adds about $1 billion in new spending for the fiscal year that begins July 1.
Adams, who is running for re-election, unveiled the spending plan in an upbeat, campaign-style speech at his own alma mater, Bayside High School in Queens. Branding the plan as the “best budget ever,” he only briefly acknowledged “uncertainty on the horizon due to recent federal policies,” and instead emphasized multi-year funding promises such as $167 million to shore up the 3-K education program, $331 million for after-school and $39 million to expand high-speed internet to public housing buildings.
“I wanted to deliver it in a place where you will soon be able to feel the impacts of our investments,” Adams said from the high school’s auditorium, acknowledging the unusual level of pomp and circumstance for a budget release.
Adams administration officials say the city’s finances are in strong shape, thanks in part to increasingly slim spending on migrants as more asylum seekers leave the city’s care. But City Hall’s economists expect tougher times ahead, projecting that the city’s tax-revenue growth will slow from 8% this year to 1% next year. Gaps between expected spending and revenues now stand at a combined $16 billion between 2027 and 2029, an increase of more than $1 billion from the January budget.
Notably, the city’s forecasts still do not account for the impact of Trump’s tariffs, which officials acknowledged could deal New York a severe blow by slowing the global economy and deterring tourists.
“It is anticipated that if the [tariff] policy is not brought to clarity quickly, that both consumption and investment will deteriorate further, which poses a substantial broad-based risk to the city’s vast economy and therefore its tax base,” reads one of the budget documents released Thursday. In the same report, city economists wrote that economic growth is “threatened by the haphazard policies
embraced by the new Trump administration.”
The relatively generous spending won unusual early praise from the City Council, which usually pushes for more money during negotiations with the mayor’s office. Council Speaker Adrienne Adams and Finance Chair Justin Brannan credited the mayor with funding “many of the priorities” that lawmakers had demanded, such as early childhood education, though they pledged to push for more.
Watchdogs were much harsher. Andrew Rein, president of the hawkish Citizens Budget Commission, said Adams’ proposal “fails to address the dual threats of looming federal budget cuts and a possible recession” and criticized the decision to grow spending without adding to the city’s reserves.
City Comptroller Brad Lander, who is running for mayor, said the spending plan “is from a fantasyland” free of tariffs and federal cuts, while the state comptroller, Thomas DiNapoli, urged the city to “face the fiscal reality.”
Jacques Jiha, the city’s budget director, argued that the city’s $8 billion in reserves across various accounts are adequate to weather any future storm. And other officials were even more bullish: First Deputy Mayor Randy Mastro chided reporters for asking whether the city is making preparations for a severe recession.
“To even ask the question about a doomsday scenario is to be with those pessimists and political opportunists who don’t bet on New York,” Mastro said.
Adams on Thursday also announced additions to the 10-year capital plan, a separate budget released every other year that lays out infrastructure commitments for the coming decade. That plan now stands at $173 billion, up from $170 billion in January, thanks to new commitments including $250 million to advance the long-awaited redesign of Fifth Avenue in Midtown, and $109 million to reconstruct the Brooklyn Marine Terminal.
The migrant crisis has now cost the city a combined $7.5 billion since it began in 2022, far less than the $12 billion Adams once insisted the city would spend through July 2025. Critics have accused the mayor of inflating that expected spending in a bid for federal and state aid, while City Hall has attributed the reductions to its own smart spending.
Adams’ new budget uses city dollars to fill a $1 billion hole in migrant-related expenses that the city had been counting on filling through state aid, only for Gov. Kathy Hochul to reject that request as part of ongoing state budget talks. Mayor Adams, speaking to reporters after his speech Thursday, implicitly criticized Hochul and suggested that city politicians who criticize President Trump’s policies should direct their ire at the state instead.
“No one is talking about the shortchanging of New York City on the state level. We’re talking about it on a federal level,” he said.
Despite the campaign atmosphere, Adams’ speech at times had the feel of a farewell event. With his re-election prospects in doubt, this year’s budget may well be his last as mayor, and Adams began his speech by sitting down onstage and gazing wistfully at the crowd of city officials seated before him. Among those in attendance were former deputy mayors Anne Williams-Isom and Meera Joshi — two of the four deputies who resigned in February in protest of the mayor’s willingness to collaborate with Trump on immigration.
