(The Center Square) — New York mayoral candidate Andrew Cuomo is being lambasted by his political rivals over his shifting plans for the city’s notorious Rikers Island jail.
Speaking at a Crain’s New York business forum on Wednesday, Cuomo called for the facility to remain open and said that the city’s current plan to replace it with four neighborhood-based jails is unrealistic. He said the plan to close Rikers by 2027 is “way over budget” and could be delayed by as much as a decade.
“The writing is on the wall. It promises to be New York City’s Big Dig,” Cuomo said in remarks at the event, referring to the city of Boston’s boondoggle tunnel project. “It is already years late, billions over budget, and obsolete.”
Cuomo’s plan calls for rebuilding the Rikers jail on the existing site and repurposing the site where the four borough-based jails are being constructed into mixed-use residential housing. He said the issue of allowing families to visit inmates could be dealt with by a bus service to the jail.
“We should rebuild new state-of-the-art jails on Rikers Island, provide free bus service, and use those existing sites for housing and commercial development,” Cuomo said.
But the campaign pitch is a dramatic shift for the former New York governor, who had recently called for the jail to be shut down, and his chief rivals in the race wasted no time criticizing his proposal.
Zohran Mamdani, a Queens Assemblyman who beat Cuomo in the Democratic primary, called the Rikers plan a “betrayal not only of the law as it stands today, but also of what New Yorkers actually want.”
“Andrew Cuomo’s proposal to take that which is broken, that which is morally bankrupt, that which is a stain on our city, and to keep it open,” the Democratic socialist said in remarks.
Republican mayoral nominee Curtis Sliwa also supports keeping the jail open, but seized on Cuomo’s remarks to criticize the former governor for shifting his stance, calling it a “desperate move for redemption.”
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“New Yorkers are watching a Cuomo that is so desperate for personal redemption that he will say whatever is convenient,” Sliwa, a founder of the Guardian Angels, said in a statement. “He’s the ultimate flip-flop man.”
The latest polls show Mamdani with a double-digit lead over Cuomo and Sliwa, with the general election less than a month away.
