Transcript: Mayor Adams Appears Live On NY1's “Mornings On 1'

July 1, 2024

Pat Kiernan: Mayor Adams joins me now. Good morning, Mr. Mayor.

Mayor Eric Adams: Hey, Pat. How are you? Good to see you.

Kiernan: I'm well. You must be breathing a sigh of relief here. How far apart in the end here was where you thought this budget should be with where the Council wanted it to be?

Mayor Adams: Speaker Adams and I, we do more than share the same last name. We share the same destiny and goals of helping working-class New Yorkers, and the budget reflects that. Everything from the fare, how we have those with SYEP participants get MetroCards to $2 billion into our housing to just make it an additional $26 billion to 3K to pre-K, to $53 million in our culture institution and $58 million into our libraries. These are the same vision. I kept saying over and over again, this is part of the process, part of the conversation. We had to find efficiencies. We had to close a $7.1 billion budget deficit and keep over $8 billion in our reserves. We were able to accomplish that.

Kiernan: Do you regret going after the library funding in particular? Because as soon as you announced that, councilmembers were on you. How dare the mayor take away Sunday libraries? Then it ends up getting restored here. There was a political price to pay for something that ultimately didn't happen.

Mayor Adams: Let me tell you about leadership. Leadership is making the tough decisions. I made the tough decisions when I became mayor, and it's not always popular. I learned from Bloomberg after 9/11 how he had to make those tough decisions to get us on track. If I did not make those tough decisions back in my first year in office, we would not be having this conversation right now. Little did we know we were going to have to spend $4.9 billion on migrants and asylum seekers. It was unsure what our economy was going to look like. I wanted to make this city affordable, safe, and ensure the right trajectory. You take the heat, but I knew that both the speaker and I would sit down with the Finance chair, Justin Brannan, and my team to come to a conclusion. Jacques Jiha did an amazing job. I'll take the hits, but I know we're going to hit it out of the park for everyday New Yorkers.

Kiernan: I had Tony Marx, the CEO of the New York Public Library System, on the program. He said it's really hard to make decisions when the day before the fiscal year begins you don't know what the funding is going to be. One of the things you did in this budget was agree that there would be a higher baseline for the libraries, that the potential for future cuts would be less. Tell me about that decision.

Mayor Adams: We want to ensure that people can plan, and I think Tony and the rest of the library crew, Linda, Dennis Walcott, these are longtime friends that we have brought together to improve the libraries for years. We know what libraries mean to people. It's more than a place where you have books. It is a place of bringing together communities. We clearly understand that, and we take that into consideration. Our goal was to baseline, as Speaker Adams stated, so it could be more predictable what the future looks like for an institution like our libraries. We baselined several things. Look at what we did with Summer Rising. These were all sunsetting dollars from the previous administration. We knew that we had to go in and find the money on these very important issues. Pat, many people don't realize we had to close a $7 billion budget gap. That is just unbelievable, and keep that $8.2 million reserve if we have difficult times, that's ahead.

Kiernan: Here's some of the highlights again of this budget deal, the seven-day restoration of library service and that additional funding for 3K and pre-K programs. Mayor Adams, I want to move on to a couple other topics. You had, along with the NYPD, really pushed back against the City Council over the How Many Stops Act, which requires officers to collect a certain amount of data during their public interactions. Ultimately, you tried to veto it. The Council had enough votes to override the veto. Will the NYPD faithfully implement this starting today?

Mayor Adams: Yes, we will. I spoke with the counsel at the New York City Police Department yesterday, Mike Gerber, and he clearly indicated that training was in place and the infrastructure is there. As in any new initiative, there may be a few bumps along the way, but we're going to do what the law calls for us to do. The time for me to raise my concern was raised. Now that it's law, we will move forward. That is how we're always going to operate. I believe our officers should be focusing on public safety and not doing paperwork. They're one of the most, I should say, this agency is overlooked by so many different entities, from the CCRB to IAB and other outside entities. This is the law of the land. We're going to move forward and do what we're supposed to do. The New York City Police Department is ready.

Kiernan: The other thing that was supposed to happen at the end of June was the implementation of congestion pricing. We know where that is now. It's in the governor's hands. Some politicians, though, really pushing the governor for a slightly lower toll and maybe finding some portion of the MTA's funding elsewhere. Would you be in agreement with that if it was implemented, but with a lower toll?

Mayor Adams: I've had conversations with the governor on this topic. I'm very sensitive about private conversations. The governor is a partner. Good friends walk in the room when others walk out. I'm going to stay in the room with someone who has been in a room for New York City residents. Everything from giving us the housing power we need to convert office spaces to cannabis enforcement to mayoral accountability. She has been a real friend and she has been a real leader. I trust her leadership on this. I say let's allow the chief executive to navigate us through how do we do the congestion pricing.

Kiernan: Mayor Adams, to finish up here, I want to move from the governor's office to the Oval Office. I don't know if you saw the debate with Joe Biden and Donald Trump on Thursday. What was your assessment of the Joe Biden performance that so many people are concerned about?

Mayor Adams: I think the president started out slow. He seemed to pick up as he went along, but I identify with him. People have often took the worst day of my life and define it as my entire life. He had a bad debate. It wasn't what he wanted to do probably at the method that he wanted to. Let's not define the success of a leader that has shown how to address everything from our economics, our economy to public safety and so many other issues. I think right now we need to continue to allow the party, the Democratic Party, to move in the direction that they choose. I don't think you define a person by their performance and define it as the totality of their ability to lead.

Kiernan: On the occasion of the new budget that the City Council passed yesterday, Mayor Adams joining me. Thank you, mayor.

Mayor Adams: Thank you.

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