New York City Mayor Eric Adams appeared to lowball his budget for fiscal 2025 by billions of dollars last month to make his proposed $109.4 billion budget look balanced.
A new report released Thursday found that Adams’s budget was $3.6 billion more than he had unveiled. The correct figure would have shown that the proposed budget ran a deficit. Adams also lowballed budget estimates for the 2026 through 2028 fiscal years by as much as $3.9 billion, according to the Citizens Budget Commission.
A large chunk of the extra costs in 2025 is going to city housing vouchers and uniformed overtime, with the city designating $150 million for the housing vouchers instead of the $850 million it is projected to cost.
The proposed budget also omitted $200 million for homeless services and $675 million for programs funded by the New York State Education Department.
“It’s important to be much more transparent about what services you have funded in the budget and what choices you are making,” Ana Champeny, the CBC’s vice president of research, told Politico. “Because otherwise, the conversation isn’t complete.”
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Adams unveiled a $109.4 billion spending plan in January, which he claimed was much better than he expected, and said he was able to trim migrant housing and feeding costs by less than $2 billion between fiscal 2024 and fiscal 2026. The migrant crisis is projected to cost the city $10.6 billion over three years instead of $12 billion.
The mayor’s next budget update is expected in April.
