Mayor’s Budget Scapegoats Migrants, Unnecessarily Harms All New Yorkers
No. 353 | Monday, December 18, 2023
The NYC Thorn is a weekly roundup of local political news compiled by members of NYC-DSA.
Local News
The New York City Council pushed back on Mayor Eric Adams’s proposed budget cuts in a contentious hearing with members of the mayor’s administration, arguing that he is using recent migrant arrivals as a scapegoat to cut back on city services.
A new report from the City’s Independent Budget Office found that 30% of the proposed budget cuts could “substantially impact” the lives of New Yorkers. The report also estimated that the City’s budget deficit is far smaller than the one estimated by the Adams administration.
A federal judge found the Adams administration and the Department of Corrections in contempt of court for violating orders related to the Rikers Island jail complex.
The Civilian Complaint Review Board is requiring New York Police Department officers to hand over evidence in police misconduct cases within 90 days, although the oversight agency has no way of enforcing such a deadline.
A six-story building in the Bronx partially collapsed, leaving over 150 people displaced from their homes.
City & State has published a running list of bills passed by the state legislature this year that Governor Kathy Hochul has not yet signed.
Advocates and policy experts have been calling on Governor Hochul to declare a state-level public health emergency in response to the opioid crisis, as eight other states and the federal government have done. But the governor has resisted those calls, despite the fact that opioid deaths are at an all-time high in New York State.
Elections
The Republican Party has nominated Mazi Melesa Pilip, an Ethiopian-born former paratrooper in the Israel Defense Forces and a current member of the Nassau County legislature, to run for the congressional seat recently vacated by George Santos (NY-3, Massapequa, Floral Park, Little Neck) in the February 13 special election.
Pilip’s opponent, the Democratic nominee and former NY-3 congressman Tom Suozzi, declined to seek the endorsement of the Working Families Party, despite having secured their support in the past. Suozzi is seeking to cast himself as a moderate Democrat and a staunch supporter of Israel.
The special election will be the first test of New York State’s new vote-by-mail law, which allows all voters to request a mail-in ballot without needing a specific reason. The law goes into effect January 1, 2024.
The New York State Court of Appeals, New York’s highest court, ordered the state’s Independent Redistricting Commission to redraw the state’s 26 congressional districts by February 28, erasing the lines drawn by the special master for the 2022 congressional elections. The majority opinion in the 4-3 decision to redraw the maps was written by Chief Judge Rowan Wilson, who was sworn into the position this year, after a progressive campaign convinced Democrats in the State Senate to reject Governor Hochul’s initial nominee, Hector LaSalle, because of his conservative record.
Several former members of Congress, who lost their reelection campaigns due to redistricting in the 2022 cycle, may see the new congressional maps as an opportunity for a comeback.
A close ally and deputy of George Latimer, the centrist Westchester County Executive primarying Jamaal Bowman in NY-16 (Wakefield, White Plains, Yonkers, Rye), is a member of the Independent Redistricting Commission. The Working Families Party has called on him to recuse himself from redistricting. Latimer has publicly stated that he won’t be able to win the primary if the redrawn district includes more of the Bronx.
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