Mayor Adams urged state lawmakers Tuesday to provide his administration with more migrant crisis funding this year — but his plea didn’t move the needle with Gov. Hochul, who has already declared she’s not looking to earmark more such resources for New York City.
Adams delivered the request for more migrant crisis assistance before members of the New York State Senate Finance and New York State Assembly Ways and Means Committees, an annual marathon hearing where mayors from across the state trek to Albany to lay out their fiscal needs before legislators and the governor begin talks in earnest on the state budget due this spring.
In prepared testimony, Adams said the city has spent about $6.9 billion on caring for tens of thousands of mostly Latin American migrants since spring 2022 and that his team anticipates that price tag will keep swelling in coming years.
Adams — who warned in 2023 the cost of the migrant crisis “will destroy” New York — told lawmakers that without more state aid, his administration is left with a $1.1 billion city budget hole that must be addressed with spending cuts or revenue increases before the plan’s due by the July 1 start of the 2026 fiscal year.
On Jan. 16, Adams unveiled a 2026 fiscal year city budget proposal that was balanced.
But his budget director, Jacques Jiha, revealed to reporters after Tuesday’s hearing that Adams’ latest plan was only balanced because his team operated under the assumption that the city would get new state migrant crisis funding.
The $1.1 billion hole, Jiha said, comes from the fact that Hochul didn’t make good on that assumption when she released an executive state budget proposal on Jan. 21 that included no new migrant crisis aid for the city.
And Hochul’s team didn’t budge on that issue Tuesday.
“The FY26 Executive Budget does not include any new funding for the migrant crisis, and our position has not changed,” Avi Small, Hochul’s spokesman, said after Adams’ testimony.
Adams, who has typically aligned with Hochul on most issues, told reporters outside the hearing room he will try to change her mind.
“The state needs to help us,” he said, adding he would meet privately with Hochul later in the day.
Also in Tuesday’s hearing, Jiha revealed the city hasn’t yet drawn down all of $2.4 billion in migrant crisis funding the state provided last year. Jiha said the city has only received $1 billion of last year’s allocation to date.
He suggested a majority of the funding the city was provided last year remains untapped because it’s unlocked on a reimbursement basis, meaning Adams’ administration submits receipts for relevant expenses that the state then provides money against.
Jiha noted the city currently has about $750 million in outstanding claims. That leaves about $650 million from last year that has yet to be claimed by the city.
Adams’ spokespeople didn’t return requests for comment on why the city hasn’t submitted claims for the outstanding cash.
The issue of unlocking migrant crisis aid became a focal point in March 2024 after the Daily News first reported President Biden’s administration hadn’t released most of the $156 million in federal support the city had been allocated because Adams’ team hadn’t submitted the right paperwork for it. Adams’ administration finally received the full allocation after the Federal Emergency Management Agency dispatched an application support team to the city.
Besides migrant crisis funding, Adams testified Tuesday he hopes Albany can act on three priorities he has highlighted for months, including passing a bill that would eliminate city income tax for low-income New Yorkers; passing a bill that would expand the ability to involuntarily hospitalize mentally ill individuals; and undo some of the 2020 criminal justice laws that put more requirements on the ways in which prosecutors share evidence with defendants in criminal cases during the pre-trial discovery phase.
Those three priorities weren’t as extensively discussed in Tuesday’s hearing, and it’s unclear what sort of appetite the Democrat-controlled Legislature — which crafted the discovery reforms — might have to roll them back.
Hochul has voiced support for rolling back the discovery reforms, and is also backing the mayor’s pushes for scrapping city income tax for some residents and expanding the involuntary commitment standards.