After months of warning New Yorkers of an imminent fiscal crisis, Mayor Eric Adams on Tuesday proposed a $109 billion budget that he framed as far less dire than expected.
The mayor said the city’s chief challenge — a continuing influx of migrants from the southern border — was likely to cost less than forecast after officials adopted certain cost-cutting measures and a less open stance toward giving the migrants shelter.
Mr. Adams said the city had cut the costs of housing and feeding migrants to roughly $10.6 billion over three years, down from about $12 billion, and pushed many migrants out of the city’s care.
The mayor announced that the city would be receiving $2.9 billion more in expected tax revenues over the 2024 and 2025 fiscal years than initially expected. The new forecast validated criticism by City Council leaders, who had attacked Mr. Adams for making unnecessary cuts when their predictions showed that the city would receive $1.5 billion more in revenues than expected.
The city also seems poised to get more state money to help with the migrant influx. Earlier in the day, Gov. Kathy Hochul unveiled a $233 billion state budget that included $2.4 billion to help New York City manage its migrant crisis — a $500 million increase over last year’s allotment.
But even as Mr. Adams celebrated the city’s improved financial outlook and thanked the governor for additional state funding, he repeated his call for the Biden administration to provide significant federal funding to New York and other cities affected by the migrant crisis.
“We are not out of the woods,” Mr. Adams said in a speech at City Hall. “While we have put New York City on the right track, to keep moving forward, we still need help from the federal and state governments.”
The mayor’s shifting budget announcements have created confusion among New Yorkers and upheaval within agencies that are struggling to plan for the future.
Mr. Adams froze police hiring and slashed school funding as he announced deep budget cuts in November, only to reverse many of the cuts this month. Libraries were forced to close on Sundays; now they will be spared from closing many branches on Saturdays.
The mayor’s critics have assailed his budget management. The leaders of the left-leaning Working Families Party said that Mr. Adams had “scapegoated” migrants for “cuts that weren’t even necessary to begin with.”
“Setting your own house on fire and then putting it out doesn’t make you a hero,” said the group’s co-directors, Ana María Archila and Jasmine Gripper.
Mr. Adams said that if the city received enough funding from the state, he would cancel further budget cuts that were planned for April.
The cuts have been unpopular with New Yorkers, and Mr. Adams appears to have received the message that they could hurt his political future. The mayor’s approval rating plunged to 28 percent last month — the lowest level since Quinnipiac University began polling the popularity of New York City mayors in 1996.
His unfavorable ratings may also be driven by a federal investigation into his campaign fund-raising. The F.B.I. raided the home of the mayor’s chief fund-raiser in November, and Mr. Adams’s phones and tablet were seized as part of the federal investigation.
Mr. Adams said he was focused on a “triangle offense” to focus city spending on economic recovery from the pandemic, including “public safety, public spaces and people.”
The mayor has continued to blame the city’s budget woes on the cost of caring for the almost 171,000 migrants the city has processed since the spring of 2022. As of this week, just over 68,000 asylum seekers are still under its care.
Shahana Hanif, a city councilwoman who is chairwoman of the Council’s Immigration Committee, questioned whether the money was being allocated responsibly.
“He’s doing some funny math here, and every time we’ve tried to ask for transparency or clarification on these numbers, the administration has not come forth with any detailed analysis,” Ms. Hanif said.
The combination of increased revenue, state aid and lower than predicted asylum seeker costs mitigate the need for additional service cuts. Such cuts could force more working- and middle-class families to leave New York, said Nathan Gusdorf, executive director of the Fiscal Policy Institute, a left-leaning policy group.
Despite the rosier financial projections, the city still faces projected budget gaps of $5 billion in 2025 and 2026 and $6 billion in 2027. Andrew Rein, president of the Citizens Budget Commission, a fiscally conservative and nonpartisan watchdog group, said that the budget gaps would likely be even larger because of expiring federal aid, unfunded programs and overtime costs, and that “more hard choices are still needed to stave off a fiscal reckoning.”
“What we’ve got to do is focus on the programs that have impact and then run them efficiently,” Mr. Rein said.
The mayor’s budget proposal is negotiated with the City Council, and by June 30, it must pass a budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1. Leaders in the Council have been increasingly confrontational with the mayor — approving two criminal justice measures he opposed in December and overriding a veto on a housing voucher plan in July — and are likely to bring their own budget priorities to the negotiations.
The city’s budget has continued to grow. The mayor’s preliminary budget last January was nearly $103 billion — roughly $6 billion less than his current proposal.
Justin Brannan, a councilman from Brooklyn who is chairman of the City Council’s Finance Committee, told reporters that the Council wants to restore some cuts, including bringing back Sunday services at libraries.
Mr. Brannan said that Mr. Adams’s rhetoric over the budget prompted constituents to yell at Mr. Brannan about the city firing police officers because of the cost of housing migrants.
“That was never true, and it’s really not true now,” he said. “So that narrative is just not helpful.”
Mr. Brannan encouraged the mayor to treat the Council as a “coequal branch of government.”
“We’re not here to dunk on the mayor,” he said. “We’re here to get to work, and now we know how much money we have to work with. Let’s restore some of our priorities.”
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