Gotham’s budget might be late, with City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams warning last week that she and Mayor Adams (no relation) will miss this Sunday’s fiscal-year deadline.
But the timing of the budget is less important than the substance.
The council and the mayor are arguing over tidbits while missing the big chunk of spending obscuring New York’s future: How much can we realistically spend on migrants?
In his budget proposal, the mayor has finally admitted to reality — the migrant “crisis” is here to stay.
This is a reality that he helped create, by continuing to offer all migrants, including single young men with no credible claims to political asylum, at least 30 to 60 days of city-paid shelter.
And the city is now institutionalizing this “crisis” as a permanent part of city government.
Last Tuesday, the mayor announced that the city will no longer rely on so many “emergency” no-bid contracts, instead starting a competitive-bid process for vendors interested in managing migrant hotels and shelters as well as providing other migrant services.
Tellingly, this process is going to be “open-ended” with no deadlines, the city’s bid documents state.
As migrants continue to flock to New York, the city will keep opening shelters for them.
The city will sign contracts with various vendors for at least a year apiece, and “possibly additional sites” will be added to the city’s hundreds of migrant shelters.
And the services the city will ask these contractors to provide are comprehensive.
Under its voluntary “right to shelter” pledge, the city has in court committed itself to providing people with shelter and food.
Yet we’ve been adding services over the past two years that are gradually becoming a default.
There’s “case management”: At every shelter, the vendor must “assess the specific needs of each individual including progress and barriers towards exiting shelter.”
There’s “childcare plan making.”
There’s laundry — not just washing sheets and towels in bulk, as hotels do, but personal, bagged pick-up-and-delivery laundry.
Between project managers, case managers, security guards, food servers and laundry providers, New York City is building up a mini-economy of thousands of contract workers and hundreds of vendors, all of whom depend on this “crisis” persisting.
Not to mention all the owners of B- and C-grade hotels and vacant office space, happy to have a long-term customer.
And now, the city will ask vendors to provide 30% of their subcontracts to minority- and women-owned businesses, creating a broader constituency in favor of a permanent migrant “crisis.”
As we enter this “next phase,” as the city puts it, spending on migrants is already rising to $4.7 billion annually for the 2025 fiscal year that starts Monday, up $1 billion from the current year.
The city expects the amount to fall to $4 billion in 2026, to $3 billion in 2027, and then zeroes out future spending altogether.
But on what realistic basis is this spending going to vanish?
The city is going to ask an army of contractors to locate and procure new hotels and office space, collectively hire thousands of contract workers, and then just . . . shut it down?
No, New York is creating a permanent, expensive new entitlement program.
It’s also taking pressure off the Biden administration, which should be identifying people eligible for refugee resettlement before they cross the border and sharply curtailing the admittance of people spuriously claiming “asylum.”
A permanent new program costing billions of dollars annually has huge implications for the city budget, which, under Adams’ proposal, will top out at $114.1 billion next year.
Migrant spending of $4.7 billion for the upcoming year is 14% of the salaries and wages the city pays to its total workforce — so if it persists, New York will face severe cutbacks in the regular day-to-day services it provides.
But the council isn’t questioning this big picture, instead quibbling over crumbs.
Should the city add back funding for Sunday library hours? Should it restore CUNY funding? Funding for sufficient building inspectors?
Sure, it probably should, but these things cost, collectively, tens of millions of dollars, not billions.
Last week, Speaker Adams compared the budget negotiations to landing a plane after spending some time in a holding pattern and going through a “diversion.”
But it feels like we’re aloft in a Boeing Max, headed for an avertable disaster.
Nicole Gelinas is a contributing editor to the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal.