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Max Politics Podcast: Comptroller Brad Lander on City Budget Negotiations


Comptroller Brad Lander at City Hall (photo: Office of the NYC Comptroller)


June 27, 2023 - Max Politics Podcast: Comptroller Brad Lander on City Budget Negotiations

NYC Comptroller Brad Lander joined the show to discuss city budget negotiations, the items he's most focused on as Mayor Adams and the City Council craft the new budget, the city's economic and fiscal health, and more.

Listen to the conversation and let us know what you think, on Twitter @TweetBenMax. You can listen to the show through the embedded audio below or download the episode wherever you get your podcasts at Max Politics.

Read more: Max Politics Podcast: Comptroller Brad Lander on City Budget Negotiations

15 Things to Watch as a New City Budget is Negotiated


Mayor Adams & Speaker Adams announce a budget agreement, June 2022 (photo: Ed Reed/Mayor's Office)


As the July 1 deadline looms for New York City’s budget for the 2024 fiscal year, Mayor Eric Adams and the New York City Council must resolve major differences over what will be a roughly $110 billion spending plan.

This year’s budget also closely coincides with this month’s primary elections, which has many City Council members on the ballot and may be delaying a final agreement until just before the start of the new fiscal year.

Among the series of disputes between the two sides of City Hall that are central to city budget negotiations include how much revenue the city will have at its disposal, how much to spend and save in reserve, potential restoration of specific funding cuts Mayor Adams made during a mid-fiscal year budget modification last November, the mayor’s proposals for additional targeted cuts into next fiscal year, and much more.

The City Council is also focused on how to ensure that the mayoral administration improves its personnel retention and hiring practices as more than 20,000 budgeted vacancies remain across city agencies as a number of vital services suffer.

Spending and Saving
Negotiations are based on the proposed $106.7 billion executive budget that Adams put forward in April, the largest in the city’s history. It was a $4 billion increase over his February preliminary budget, in large part due to new labor contracts, but roughly $2.2 billion lower than the projected $108.9 billion in spending for the current fiscal year.

As the city continues to settle municipal labor contracts, the administration allocated about $16 billion from the current fiscal year through fiscal year 2027, accounting for a significant uptick in spending for the next fiscal year. The increased spending is also attributed to the significant costs of the migrant asylum-seeker crisis that continues to confound the Adams administration and stress the budget.

The mayor has continued to institute a Program to Eliminate the Gap (PEG) to slow spending increases and find efficiencies at city agencies, but future budget gaps remain large – $4.2 billion in fiscal year 2025, $6 billion in fiscal year 2026, and $7 billion in fiscal year 2027 as of the executive budget.

Facing criticism over several PEG iterations that have required savings across city agencies, the mayor did not impose any additional cuts at the public library system or the Department of Cultural Affairs. He also reduced the PEG target from 4% for several agencies whose services would have been adversely affected, including the fire department, the sanitation department, the parks department, the Human Resources Administration and homeless services department, and the Department of Youth and Community Development.

But the mayor did not undo cuts imposed in previous iterations of the budget that have already gone into effect — for instance at the city libraries, parks department, and CUNY — and have rankled many critics, forming the basis for negotiations over funding restoration that members of the City Council have in mind as part of the new budget.

The mayor’s budget plan also sets aside about $8 billion in reserves, including $1.2 billion in the general reserve, $2 billion in the Rainy Day Fund, $4.58 billion in the Retiree Health Benefits Trust fund, and $250 million in the Capital Stabilization Fund.

The proposed capital budget for infrastructure is also the largest in city history, with $164.8 billion allocated to the 2024-2033 ten-year capital strategy — a separate but related piece of budget negotiations. The city’s operating budget includes billions of dollars in annual debt service to pay down the costs of the capital program that funds new schools, parks, climate projects, and more.

Though there has been some good news for the city, as tax revenues came in $2.1 billion higher than expected for the current fiscal year, and projected revenues for fiscal year 2024 are $2.3 billion higher than previous expectations  – the mayor’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and fiscal experts predict an eventual economic slowdown than will lead to lower revenue in the years to come.

On the other hand, the Council, especially its Progressive Caucus, and citywide officials like Comptroller Brad Lander and Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, are calling for deeper investments in the social safety net and warning against even modest cuts across a number of agencies and programs.

“Since day one, Mayor Adams has focused on making upstream investments to help New Yorkers who need them most, while exercising strong fiscal management,” a City Hall spokesperson said in a statement. “In last year’s Adopted Budget, we were able to reach an early handshake deal with the Council that included record levels of reserves and funding for key priorities to make our city safer, fairer, and more prosperous. In this year’s negotiations, we are looking forward to building on that progress while ensuring we are being realistic about the fiscal and economic challenges we face. The most effective way for the City Council to ensure we can continue funding shared priorities and services that keep New York City clean and safe is to work with us toward an early or on-time budget, and we look forward to that continued partnership in the coming days.”

The mayor and Council must look further than just the next fiscal year, cautioned Andrew Rein, president of Citizens Budget Commission, a nonprofit fiscal watchdog.

“The straight ahead situation is there is going to be some money in the pocket for the city to have in the short-term, and in the long-term, the budget gaps – especially when you add on the risks, and these aren't just notional risks, these are real – are huge,” said Rein. He added that budget gaps are likely understated because of major fiscal cliffs, including under-budgeted costs of overtime and special education spending, and the cost of expanded rental assistance vouchers, to name a few. “Seven months from now, the mayor has to propose a budget that, as I look at it now, might be having to close a $7 billion gap,” Rein said.

He cautioned against adding more spending for the 2024 fiscal year, which will only lead to larger gaps in the future. “The problem is right now we're building the cliffs bigger…We’ve gone from what used to be the budget dance of [possible cuts to] culturals and libraries to the cliff dance, which is a much more dangerous game.”

Meanwhile, the City Council, nonprofit groups, and progressive advocates have all said the city needs to be spending more for the people who need it most. They have been broadly critical of the mayor’s budget priorities, decrying what they see as unnecessary cuts and misplaced priorities, with core city services for the most vulnerable New Yorkers already hurt. The Council, in its response to the executive budget, identified about $1.8 billion in additional revenue between the current and next fiscal year over OMB’s projections, citing those numbers in opposing the mayor’s cuts. OMB Director Jacques Jiha has, however, continued to argue that the city cannot afford to keep adding spending since the money may not be there in the next fiscal year and beyond, migrant costs are escalating and uncertain, and there are already large budget gaps to close.

At a news conference on June 22, City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams said the brunt of negotiations had to do with restoring enacted and proposed cuts. “It's an uphill battle given what we're up against...and trying to restore things that in essence were taken away from New Yorkers. Services were taken away, promises of other things to be taken away are on the table," she said. “We are adamant about going through these negotiations with true intent to try to preserve as much as we can.”

Asked about the main points of contention with City Hall, a spokesperson for the speaker referred Gotham Gazette back to her comments.

Progressive advocates have similarly been pushing back against the many cuts the mayor has proposed. “With less than 10 days before the budget is voted on, Mayor Adams has still not conceded to rolling back his most unpopular cuts; cuts to CUNY, 3K, libraries, and housing and social services,” said Zara Nasir, coordinator of The People’s Plan, a progressive advocacy coalition, in a text message. “Even congressional democrats today in a letter to the Mayor agreed that care, not cuts, are a must in our next city budget. Our coalition is laser focused on pushing for as many concessions from the Mayor on these resources that New Yorkers rely on. The Mayor should do the smart thing and restore these crucial services.”

As Nasir noted, Democratic Reps. Jerry Nadler, Nydia Velazquez, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Jamaal Bowman wrote to the mayor last week, urging him to reverse course. “Some of the cuts proposed in your administration’s executive budget are relatively small but troublingly short-sighted,” they wrote, as first reported by the New York Daily News. The letter was also signed by Public Advocate Williams, Comptroller Lander,  Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, and 17 Democratic state legislators.

On Friday, the mayor vetoed a package of bills passed by the City Council that were aimed at easing access to housing for people experiencing or threatened by homelessness, setting up yet another contentious battle with the Council. The mayor explained, in part, that the costs of the bills would add too much additional spending to the strained budget. It was just the second veto Adams has issued in his 18-month tenure – his predecessor, Bill de Blasio, didn’t veto a single bill in his eight years in office – and prompted a sharp rebuke from Speaker Adams, who said the Council is prepared to override it.

According to Mia McDonald, New York political manager at the progressive Working Families Party, the veto was just the most recent in a string of bad decisions by the mayor, along with the proposed cuts to education and social services, and his failure to tackle the municipal vacancy crisis. “All of these things are just piling on top of each other and we feel that he's really failed to govern,” she said in an interview.

Migrant Costs
Over the last year, more than 78,700 asylum-seekers have arrived in the city, with about 48,700 of them still under the city’s care. The administration has repeatedly estimated that the cost of providing shelter and other services to migrants will reach about $4.3 billion by the end of next fiscal year, and that the federal and state governments need to provide much-needed aid to the city.

There have been competing estimates, however, with the Independent Budget Office predicting in an analysis in May that the crisis will cost the city between $2.7 billion and $3.7 billion and Comptroller Lander estimating the costs at about $4 billion.

The state budget approved in May included about $1 billion in aid over two years to cover 29% of the city’s cost of sheltering migrants, the same percentage the state covers of other homeless shelter costs, but the federal government has sent limited financial assistance so far. The mayor’s executive budget is relying on both to cover additional costs past the 2024 fiscal year, after which the city faces a significant fiscal cliff if it does not receive any more aid.

Personnel and Vacancies
The administration continues to struggle to tackle a vacancy crisis across city government as well, which has affected the ability of many city agencies to fulfill their core responsibilities.

When the mayor released his preliminary budget in January, he undertook a vacancy reduction initiative that eliminated roughly 4,300 positions to reduce spending by about $350 million annually. At the time, there were still close to 23,000 budgeted vacancies left unfilled, and the mayor has taken some steps to speed up hiring and attract workers to city government, though critics say he acted far too slowly and did not take sufficient efforts to tackle the crisis. Comptroller Lander even noted in a December report that early steps taken by the administration had exacerbated the problem.

"I think, first and foremost...we have to fill those vacancies," said Council Finance Chair Brannan, in a recent podcast interview with Gotham Gazette discussing the Council's priorities and city budget negotiations, "because we had two weeks of hearings where just about every commissioner alluded to the fact that they're struggling because of vacancies, and then you have OMB come in and say, 'you know, these aren't the droids you're looking for, and these PEGs had minimal impact.'"

Brannan agreed, though, that the massive number of vacancies and their impact on services is more of a management than budgeting issue, and he is among the Council members pushing for the mayoral administration to speed the pace at which it is reevaluating personnel policies to allow some remote work, increase salaries, and make other changes to increase hiring and retention.

It remains to be seen whether the mayor will continue to try to shrink the municipal workforce, or “right size” it, as he has called it, to create a more efficient government. The city currently has about 301,000 full-time and full-time equivalent workers. The budget adopted last year had an authorized headcount of 334,453 for the current fiscal year which has since decreased to 329,962. The mayor’s latest budget proposal sets that number at 327,948 — a workforce size the city has almost no chance to actually hit next fiscal year, even if budgeted, given its challenges with recruitment and retention.

State Budget Effects
Due to delays in passage of the state budget, the mayor’s executive budget was created without being able to account for several state funding streams and cost shifts. The city is set to receive the $1 billion in migrant funding as well as additional funds for prosecutors, public defenders, and the implementation of discovery reform. The state budget also included a new pot of rent relief funding for NYCHA tenants behind on their payments, which will help solidify the public housing authority’s bottom line.

The state budget also included an MTA rescue plan – which includes state assistance, additional funds to improve subway service and to create a free bus pilot in each borough – that requires the city to pitch in an additional $165 million annually to the MTA on top of the $2.4 billion it already contributes directly every year. 

Between the MTA contribution and about $340 million in cuts to Medicaid matching funds, the city is expecting to take a half-billion-dollar annual hit from the state budget.

[Read: How Mayor Adams' Albany Agenda Fared in the New State Budget]

Education
Education funding is likely to be a contentious issue considering last year’s dust up between the mayor and the City Council over school cuts made by the Department of Education. Though the Council voted to approve them as part of the administration’s overall education spending plan (in which overall education funding was up) at the time the budget was adopted last June, members later felt they had been misled by the DOE about cuts to individual schools over decreased student enrollment, and sought to reverse the blow, even unsuccessfully suing the administration for it.

In the mayor’s executive budget released in April, the DOE saw a cut of about $778 million for the next fiscal year compared to the last budget modification in November. Those cuts stem from a number of factors including the mayor’s attempt to ‘right-size’ school budgets as enrollment has declined, his decision to scrap the expansion of the 3-K program, and federal relief funding that is running out.

The mayor and Schools Chancellor David Banks announced last month that they will not cut any school budgets for the start of the new 2023-24 school year, but they left open the possibility that there could be mid-year funding adjustments, either up or down, after enrollment numbers are tallied.

The City Council has already made it clear that they will not brook any further cuts to education. In its preliminary budget response, the Council pushed the mayor to restore $388.1 million in education funding to cover everything from early childhood education, expanded 3-K, pay parity for early childhood education providers, expanded Career and Technical Education, community schools, afterschool programs, and more.

“Early Childhood Education is a huge priority for this council,” said Council Member Brannan, in the June 8 appearance on Gotham Gazette’s Max Politics podcast. “We are very concerned with the fact that there are so many open 3K seats. I think that speaks to some sort of disconnect in the outreach to connect families with those seats. I just cannot imagine that there's 30,000 families in the city of New York who wouldn't love to have a 3K seat for their kid.”

The Council has also pushed back against cuts at CUNY, which has seen its funding drop by about $155 million in the current fiscal year, according to a Council analysis, leading to 235 faculty and staff positions being lost. The mayor’s executive budget would impose another $41 million in cuts annually over the next three fiscal years, largely impacting the CUNY community colleges that the city is mostly responsible for funding while the state supports the senior colleges (and both sets of schools also rely on tuition payments and other sources of revenue).

Adams has also justified CUNY cuts based on decreased enrollment — there were sharp drops during the pandemic, especially at the community colleges, though the Council has helped spearhead efforts to re-enroll many of the students who left the system and wants to keep investing in those efforts.

“Inconsistent state and city funding, unstable tuition revenues, the expiration of federal pandemic aid, and rising costs due to inflation pose serious challenges to CUNY’s finances,” the Council’s May report reads. “For CUNY to remain the world class educational, research, and workforce development institution that New Yorkers need and deserve, the City must restore planned cuts and work with the State to establish more reliable funding streams for the university system.”

Fair Fares Expansion
As the MTA considers increasing the bus and subway fare from $2.75 to $2.90 this year, the City Council and transit advocates are pushing for the expansion of the city’s Fair Fares program, which provides half-priced MetroCards to low-income New Yorkers.

The Council has proposed expanding eligibility for the program to New Yorkers with incomes up to 200% of the federal poverty level, or about $60,000 for a family of four, up from the current threshold of 100% of the poverty level. Roughly 280,000 New Yorkers are enrolled in the program, which is funded at about $75 million annually. The Council’s expansion would require an additional $61.5 million each year and make about 1 million New Yorkers eligible for the benefit.

Cuts to Senior Services
The mayor and City Council have introduced dueling proposals over meal programs for seniors, with the mayor seeking to cut funding based on a less than anticipated appetite for the service and the Council pushing to raise spending. The divergence is emblematic of many other budget battles where the mayor is responding to lower enrollment or uptake while the Council wants to keep or expand funding in order to entice more participants and meet the needs of the most vulnerable.

The mayor's latest spending plan cuts the Home-Delivered Meal Program budget by $5 million and meals in senior centers by $7 million in the next fiscal year and $5.5 million in the outyears.

In total, the executive budget would reduce the Department for the Aging's senior center and meals funding by roughly $18 million.

The Council, on the other hand, is seeking to expand home-delivered meals by $18 million and add $51 million for senior centers, including for congregate meals and outreach.

Cuts to Jail Programs
Adams is proposing to end a $17 million program that offers a range of group sessions in city jails as part of the 4% PEG announced in April. Providers say the program, which includes classes, counseling, and reentry services, helps reduce violence in jails and recidivism. Contracts for the current program expire June 30. The Department of Correction has said they can provide similar services in-house without the outside contract.

On Thursday, the Council's Criminal Justice Chair, Carlina Rivera, Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, and others joined service-providers The Fortune Society and Osborne Association to call for the programs to be preserved.

The Council is also seeking nearly $58 million for Justice Involved Supportive Housing, which offers housing and social services for people cycling through the jail and shelter systems.

Police Spending
The executive budget allocates $10.8 billion to the NYPD between the department's operating budget and centralized costs, according to an analysis from Citizens Budget Commission.

While that proposed funding remains relatively flat with the current fiscal year 2023 budget, CBC estimates both budgets fall short of actual spending because they fail to account for excessive overtime costs and a new collective bargaining agreement with the Police Benevolent Association. On June 15, Adams announced another tentative contract agreement with 11 uniformed unions, including four police unions, that will cost the city roughly $4 billion over five years.

The size of the NYPD budget has been a particular flashpoint in city budget negotiations in recent years, including a focus on its overtime spending, which routinely balloons well beyond the adopted budget allocation. Mayor Adams has expressed few qualms about those runaway OT costs, saying he will not put a cap on public safety.

“We care about responsible budgeting, and the fiscal health of our city, and allowing an agency’s overtime spending to routinely go beyond its budgeted amount year after year is not responsible budgeting," said Council Speaker Adams at a press conference after the executive budget was released.

The fiscal year 2024 executive budget allocates uniformed police overtime spending at $372 million, the same as the previous year's adopted budget. A report from Comptroller Lander's office estimates that figure will underestimate uniformed overtime by $278 million in the next fiscal year. By comparison, the April spending plan increased uniform overtime spending to $598 million (again, from $372 million at adoption) with the comptroller's office estimating it will reach $725 million by the end of the fiscal year later this month.

According to the report, police civilian overtime is expected to be $37 million over budget by the end of the current fiscal year, and $20 million over what is included in the executive budget for the next fiscal year.

Overtime Spending
The NYPD isn't the only city agency with overtime spending, but it is by far the biggest.

In total, the fiscal year 2024 executive budget includes a total overtime budget of $1.26 billion, a drop from the $1.94 billion budgeted in fiscal year 2023, according to the comptroller's office, which estimates the total price tag will reach $2.23 billion. Lander has attributed the increase to greater NYPD deployments, including a plan last fall to surge officers into the subway system, and on other agencies relying on overtime to fill gaps caused by staff vacancies.

Like the NYPD, other uniformed workforces are also expected to exceed the mayor's proposed overtime budget in fiscal year 2024, including the FDNY and Department of Correction, according to Lander. Civilian overtime is on track to reach $680 million this fiscal year, "at least" in line with fiscal year 2022 spending ($660 million) if not greater.

The comptroller projects total overtime to exceed the current executive budget allocation by more than half-a-billion dollars in fiscal year 2024.

Parks
At $610.4 million, the proposed operating budget for city parks falls just short of 0.6% of the overall executive budget, significantly lower than the 1% advocates have sought and Mayor Adams promised on the campaign trail in 2021. The proposed funding is higher than Adams' preliminary budget proposal in January, but roughly $37 million lower than spending for the current fiscal year.

Facing shortages of key staff, including lifeguards and tree-pruners, the executive budget adds 112 budgeted positions from the January plan – far less than the 1,000 new roles sought by the Council at a cost of approximately $46 million.

Human Services COLA
Nonprofit human services providers contracted by the city are seeking a 6.5% cost-of-living adjustment (COLA), or roughly $200 million, according to the Human Services Council, an association of providers, in the next fiscal year. This funding would largely go toward increased wages for human services workers who run city-contracted safety net programs.

Adams' preliminary budget included $60 million for the providers, who operate myriad services from meals for seniors to homeless shelters and more. The City Council, in its response to that spending plan, sought to double that funding to $120 million, but less than the $200 million providers are seeking as part of a campaign known as "Just Pay." The executive budget didn't budge on Adams' preliminary figure, leading providers to halt non-lifesaving services for a day in May to demonstrate the impact of the lower COLA.

[Read: 'A Day Without Human Services': Nonprofits Protest Lack of City Funding]

“Our City’s human services workers, primarily made up of women of color, provide essential services to New Yorkers but are woefully underpaid," wrote a City Council spokesperson in an email to Gotham Gazette. "It is a priority of the Council's to advance a multi-year plan that provides overdue pay increases for this workforce. Budget negotiations are ongoing, and we hope the Administration will agree in supporting our human services workers.”

The spokesperson would not say what specific dollar amount the Council was seeking but noted a COLA of 6.5% in the next fiscal year, and 5.5% and 4.5% in the subsequent years, would keep nonprofit pay increases in line with contracts recently negotiated with District Council 37, the largest municipal employees union. The Council recently called for a COLA in a Twitter post from its official account with the hashtag "#JustPay."

A parallel fight in the state budget earlier this year resulted in a 4% COLA for state-contracted providers, higher than the 2.5% proposed by Governor Kathy Hochul but less than the 8.5% advocates had sought in Albany.

The Council is also seeking an additional $117.4 million for mental health services as part of a push for pay parity for the contracted behavioral health workforce. The mayor's executive budget added a fraction of that, $40 million, for B-HEARD, a crisis response program, youth telehealth programs, clubhouses, and a digital hub to access services.

Rental Assistance Vouchers and Housing
In May, the City Council passed a package of bills to expand eligibility and loosen restrictions on a city-subsidized rental voucher, known as City FHEPS, that helps low-income New Yorkers access market-rate apartments. The package, recently vetoed by Mayor Adams despite passing with a veto-proof majority, would eliminate a rule requiring individuals to stay in a shelter for 90 days before becoming eligible for vouchers, expand eligibility to people at risk of eviction, remove income and employment requirements, and limit utility spending for voucher-holders.

Speaker Adrienne Adams and other Council members have pledged to override the veto, arguing the changes would help low-income New Yorkers find homes amid an affordable housing shortage and alleviate pressure on the city's shelter system, which has seen record high usage in part due to the influx of asylum-seekers over the past year.

The Adams administration estimates it could cost the city $17 billion over the next five years. The Council estimates the net cost to be lower, $10.6 billion over five years, which accounts for annual shelter savings of $402 million. Another analysis from Community Service Society, a nonprofit focused on economic mobility that supports the reforms, estimates the package will save the shelter system $5.6 billion over five years for a net cost to the city of $3 billion.

The executive budget includes baseline funding of $133.4 million for rental assistance programs, a number likely to increase throughout the year. In the current fiscal year, the city had budgeted $700 million for rental assistance, a majority of which ($570 million) will go to City FHEPS, according to a Council spokesperson.

In June, Adams eliminated the 90-day rule by executive action, while adding additional employment requirements, in an apparent attempt to placate the Council and advocates. Council leaders have indicated the measure falls short and strongly opposed the new requirements, further setting up the potential veto-override as budget negotiations unfold.

At the same time, housing advocates and members of the City Council have objected to Mayor Adams’ proposed cuts to the city's affordable housing agency amid the city’s ongoing housing crisis and the mayor's "moonshot" goal to build 500,000 homes over the next decade.

The executive budget includes $1.35 billion in operating funds for The Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD), the agency responsible for affordable housing creation and preservation. While an increase from the fiscal year 2023 adopted budget, the allocation would represent a cut of $95.7 million from current HPD spending. The City Council is calling for an additional $318.3 million for affordable housing, and economic and workforce development.

The Capital Budget
Separate from the proposed expense budget is the capital budget, which pays for long-term infrastructure projects and includes more than $10 billion in allocations each year. The proposed capital budget in the mayor's latest spending plan is $164.8 billion over the next decade.

The plan includes $627 million for NYCHA in the next fiscal year and roughly $1.8 billion for HPD to create and preserve affordable housing. The Council has called for more housing spending, including $3.3 billion for affordable housing preservation and construction in its preliminary budget response.

The Council is also seeking greater capital funding for a host of other priorities including $400 million for energy-efficiency upgrades in schools, $240 million more for libraries, $200 million for H+H care centers, and millions more for surveillance cameras for the departments of Sanitation and Parks, meal-delivery vans for the Department for the Aging.

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by Samar Khurshid, senior reporter, Gotham Gazette
     

Read more by this writer.

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by Ethan Geringer-Sameth, reporter, Gotham Gazette
     

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After Incumbent Drops Reelection Bid, Wide Open Harlem City Council Race to be Decided This Month


 

(l-r) Al Taylor, Inez Dickens, Yusef Salaam


New York City voters are now heading to the polls in this month’s City Council primary elections, where dozens of districts are home to intraparty contests that will determine nominees for the fall general election. All 51 Council seats are on the ballot this year, though not every district has a primary race, after the decennial Census and subsequent redistricting.

One of the most hotly contested primary races is in Harlem’s 9th Council District, where three prominent Democratic candidates are vying to replace City Council Member Kristin Richardson Jordan, who unexpectedly dropped out of the race a month before the election. The winner of the ranked-choice primary vote will face the lone Republican contender in the general election in this overwhelmingly Democratic district.

City Council District 9 covers Central Harlem, as well as sections of the Hamilton Heights and East Harlem neighborhoods. It is home to about 177,000 people, of whom 49.2% are Black, 26% Hispanic, 15.3% white, and 4.2% Asian, according to data from CUNY Graduate Center’s “Redistricting & You” project.

The full Council is again on the ballot just two years after the previous election cycle in 2021, when Richardson Jordan defeated Council Member Bill Perkins, who recently passed away, by a razor-thin margin in what was a very crowded and competitive Democratic primary. The socialist Richardson Jordan quickly became a lightning rod on a number of issues and controversies, inviting primary challengers who then drove her from the race.

In this year’s election, the 9th District is again seen as one of the most competitive races in the city — the Democratic field includes two sitting State Assembly members, Al Taylor and Inez Dickens, and Yusef Salaam, a member of the exonerated Central Park Five. (Skiboky Stora, the sole Republican candidate, has run for several offices before with little success and does not appear to be running much of a campaign for this seat.)

“Unfortunately I am writing this to inform you that I have decided not to seek re-election and not to commit to another two years,” Richardson Jordan announced to constituents and voters in a May 14 Instagram post. “I want to thank all those who have stood in solidarity and all volunteers for your time and hard work. I look forward to finishing out this term.”

Richardson Jordan’s victory in the 2021 election came as a surprise to many, when as a political newcomer, she narrowly defeated Perkins, a veteran politician who had represented District 9 from 1998 to 2005 and returned to the seat in 2017 after 10 years in the State Senate.

She described herself as a democratic socialist, and won the 2021 race on a platform of “radical love,” defunding the police, and bringing more resources to the community. She had campaigned and raised money for her reelection bid before dropping out, a decision that came amid criticism over her approach to housing development, particularly the failed One45 proposal, her poor attendance record at Council hearings, an apparent lack of collegiality with government colleagues, and other controversies, including comments she made about police officers who were killed in her district and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Given she dropped out of the race so close to the primary, her name still appears on the ballot.

Early voting began Saturday, June 17, and runs through Sunday, June 25; primary day is Tuesday, June 27. Absentee balloting by mail is ongoing. Under ranked-choice voting that was instituted in the city for municipal-level positions in special and party primary elections, voters can rank candidates by preference. If no candidate receives over 50% of first-place votes on the initial round, an “instant runoff” occurs using voters’ subsequent rankings.

With that system in mind, Salaam and Taylor cross-endorsed each other on Tuesday, June 13, asking voters to rank them first and second, in whichever order the voter prefers. Dickens, a former City Council member, responded by rolling out the endorsement of Mayor Eric Adams on Thursday, June 15. The political dynamics of the race are even more complex and interesting — for example, Salaam has the backing of Manhattan Democratic County Party leader Keith Wright, a former Assemblymember whose son is running Salaam’s campaign against two long-time uptown politicians who Wright knows well.

Among other forums and candidate appearances, Dickens, Salaam, and Taylor all appeared at a candidates’ forum hosted by The Greater Harlem Coalition on April 27 that was attended by more than 300 Harlem residents and the three candidates sat for a televised debate on Spectrum News NY1 on June 13.

According to the New York City Campaign Finance Board, the total amount campaign funds raised by each candidate from private donations and the city’s public matching funds program as of June 20 were: $215,033 for Dickens, $212,806 for Taylor, $194,913 for Salaam, and $5,950 for Stora. (Richardson Jordan raised $100,341 before she dropped out of the race.)

District Issues
Dickens served as the Council member for District 9 before leaving her seat early to head to the Assembly just ahead of hitting her consecutive term limit in the Council. She now represents much of the same area in the overlapping State Assembly 70th District. Taylor is the current representative for the State Assembly’s 71st District — located directly adjacent to Dickens’ district and covering the northernmost section of Harlem, as well as parts of nearby neighborhoods.

Unlike other areas of the city, District 9 was minimally impacted by last year’s redistricting process, with total and per-demographic population changes not exceeding a one percent difference from the previous district boundaries. Harlem itself has been changing over the years, of course, and the traditional seat of Black culture and political power has become less Black and more white and Hispanic.

Issues dominating the Democratic primary in this year’s election include housing, gentrification, and development; public safety and policing; quality-of-life concerns; and more. And while Dickens and Taylor pitch experience, Salaam is looking to appeal to voters interested in a generational shift in leadership.

A central topic at the Greater Harlem Coalition candidates’ forum was the presence and saturation of overdose prevention, drug treatment, and shelter facilities in Harlem, which is home to two safe injection sites, the first and only such facilities in the United States. Using data obtained from the city by the coalition, WNYC found that 75% of those visiting overdose prevention clinics in Harlem came from elsewhere in the city.

All three candidates at the forum — Dickens, Salaam, and Taylor — said that while they support overdose prevention clinics, residents of Harlem are being overburdened by their saturation, and that a more equal distribution across the city is necessary. In the State Assembly, Dickens and Taylor have both co-sponsored a bill (A338A), which would fully authorize overdose prevention centers in New York state, paving the way for more centers to be opened across the city.

Other issues brought up during the forum were the impact of homeless shelters on Randall’s and Wards Islands — the islands, home to large shelter complexes, are only accessible by a single bus, the M35, that terminates at the Harlem intersection of 125th Street and Lexington Avenue. According to the forum’s moderators, this has resulted in many unhoused individuals congregating in the neighborhood without having access to the resources they need. All three candidates pledged to work toward bringing more resources to shelters on Randall’s and Wards Islands.

The candidates also spoke about their plans for increasing the supply of affordable housing in the district, the impact of gentrification, and the One45 mixed-use housing development proposal, which was met by staunch opposition from Council Member Richardson Jordan. The site of the One45 project, which was scrapped due to Richardson Jordan’s objections, especially around its levels of affordable housing, was later converted into a truck depot.

The project was recently revived, though, with a new proposal from the developer. Criticism over Richardson Jordan’s failure to negotiate a deal to allow new housing in the district was a major episode in her first year in office and contributor to her eventual decision to not seek reelection. Dickens, Taylor, and Salaam all indicate they would handle such situations better and be able to get to a good deal for the community.

Inez Dickens
Dickens was born in Harlem and has lived in the neighborhood her entire life, the daughter of an Assemblymember and local real estate operator — two roles she would go on to hold herself (and her uncle was an Assembly member and State Supreme Court justice). In 1974 Dickens got a formal start in politics when she became a committee member in the New York State Democratic Party. Prior to her current position representing the 70th State Assembly District, she served as District 9’s representative in the City Council for 10 years.

Dickens took courses at New York University and Howard University, but did not graduate. (Earlier this month, The New York Post reported that Dickens did not receive a degree from Howard, despite claims on her State Assembly biography page—which have since been removed—and in public statements.) In 2014, when she was still a  member of the City Council, the New York Observer named her the city’s “richest elected official,” due to her part-ownership of four residential buildings in Harlem containing hundreds of rental apartments.

She has framed herself as a moderate, positioning her candidacy as a response to constituents’ dissatisfaction with Richardson Jordan’s left-wing approach and ineffective work in the City Council, including her stance on policing. In a statement for the NYC Votes official voter guide, Dickens said that her top three issues are affordable housing, claiming her support for income-targeted projects with 50% affordability; public safety, emphasizing anti-violence, anti-gun, and anti-gang programs; and education, stating a need for high quality technology in schools and renovations to public libraries.

“This is about displeasure with the current occupant,” Dickens said in an interview with the New York Post, referencing Richardson Jordan’s position of police abolition. “The community wants respect from the police and wants to give respect to police. When we call 911 we want police to respond. Who’s going to self police?”

During the NY1 debate, Dickens praised NYPD Commissioner Keechant Sewell, who on June 12 announced her resignation only 18 months after she was appointed.

“Commissioner Sewell did a great job for the short time that she was here,” Dickens said during the debate. “I think she was thrown into something she had not been acclimated to, she wasn’t prepared for, and it wasn’t her fault…She strove to make changes within the NYPD in order to be effective, and to see to it that if there was a bad apple within the NYPD, they would be pulled out and appropriate action would be taken.”

She has also advocated against the oversaturation of drug programs in Harlem.

“We have people that need these drug programs,” Dickens said at the candidates’ forum, discussing the aforementioned legislation. “But they need to be put everywhere, because right now, Harlem is receiving patients from Staten Island, from Brooklyn, from Queens, from everywhere. It’s not just Harlem residents that’s using the sites that’s here in Harlem. They need to have their sites in their communities just like we have them in ours.”

On housing, Dickens said she would champion the construction of new affordable units, and work to modify income requirements so that they more accurately reflect the residents of a particular area.

“I have a history of successfully negotiating for income-targeted housing. When we talk about affordability, that changes from block to block,” Dickens said at the forum. “In the Assembly lately, I was able to — and it's under construction now — [secure] 177 units of income-targeted housing with an AMI of 40-80%, AMI maximum, which the State of New York has not done in 50 years. I had to struggle to find the subsidy that will help to create it. In addition, there will be retail space, because we've got to understand that the retail space will also help to subsidize the affordability of the housing units.”

“It requires negotiation, it requires the ability to understand how you can build it with the highest number of units and the lowest AMI without killing the development,” Dickens said at the forum of negotiating a deal on real estate projects. “That's what was necessary at the One45, and that's what was not done.”

Al Taylor
Taylor represents the 71st Assembly District, which consists of the northernmost section of Harlem, as well as parts of Hamilton Heights, Washington Heights, and Inwood. He took the position in 2017 — running unopposed in a special election conducted after his predecessor, Herman “Denny” Farrell, under whom Taylor served as a chief of staff, resigned. He was up for reelection the year after, and had to win a Democratic primary before running unopposed in the general election; he’s been reelected in 2018, 2020, and 2022.

A lifelong resident of Harlem, Taylor dropped out of high school before serving in the U.S. Army’s Military Police division, where he received his G.E.D. He later graduated from Lehman College before completing a Master of Divinity degree from the Alliance Theological Seminary. He has worked as a minister, community organizer, and Democratic Party district leader.

Taylor also has a long history of advocacy against gun violence. In 2008, he started a neighborhood prayer walk program to combat gun violence called Man Up In Harlem.

During his tenure in the Assembly, Taylor said he has helped pass a number of key pieces of legislation, including on cracking down on ghost guns, strengthening tenant protections, increasing police accountability, cementing Elijah’s Law, which requires childcare facilities to follow stricter food safety and allergy prevention guidelines, and advancing bail reform. Taylor has also expressed opposition to subsequent rollbacks to those bail reforms first made in 2019 and tightened several times since.

For this election cycle, he said in a statement featured in the city’s official voter guide that his three top priorities are investing in affordable housing; economic and educational opportunity by funding schools, libraries, and small businesses; and community safety by funding community-based and mental health interventions.

At the forum, Taylor was asked a question about his stance on New York’s Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), which would, among other things, protect LGBTQ people and those seeking abortions from discrimination. He voted against the amendment last year when it came up for a vote in the Assembly, but reversed his stance, voting yes on the final version of the amendment this year.

“I have done it. Look at my record, it is there,” Taylor said of supporting the ERA. “But I didn't get there easily. And I didn't get there for the sake of community. I got there because I had to wrestle with myself, and understand what I personally believe, which is near and dear to me, does not override the thought in the vote of the people that I represent.”

To reduce the impact of drug treatment clinics on District 9, Taylor said he would propose that unoccupied commercial spaces be repurposed into social facilities across the city.

“I would look to use some of the existing commercial spaces there in consideration for treatment facilities,” he said, “so we no longer have to bear this burden in one ZIP code.”

Yusef Salaam
Salaam is a member of the group of teenagers wrongfully convicted of rape in the infamous Central Park Five case. He spent seven years in prison before being exonerated in 2002. Last December, an entrance to Central Park on its northeast corner was renamed the Gate of the Exonerated, in honor of Salaam and the four other members of The Central Park Five, sometimes called The Exonerated Five.

“I'm new to politics, but I'm not new to Harlem,” Salaam said at the candidates’ forum. “I was born here, I was raised here, my family is here. And while I left, I came back, because Harlem for me was always the scene of ‘the crime’…What we are seeing in our streets are sleeping giants. They need to be woken up, and they need to be participating. We don't need to throw them away. We need to recognize their humanity.”

Since his exoneration, Salaam has worked as a criminal justice advocate and public speaker. He is on the board of The Innocence Project, the national nonprofit that works to overturn wrongful convictions, and was a founding member of Justice 4 The Wrongfully Incarcerated. A newcomer to running for office, he says he has been a member of Harlem’s Fredrick E. Samuel Community Democratic Club for 25 years.

“It has been my mission to educate the public about the impact of mass incarceration and police brutality rooted in our justice system, regularly advocating for criminal justice reform, prison reform and the abolition of juvenile solitary confinement and capital punishment,” Salaam says on his website. “I am working to restore humanity denied to those incarcerated and those downtrodden by the spiked wheels of justice.”

Salaam has positioned himself as a political outsider, and has marketed his lack of experience in politics as a positive potential change for the Council. In a recent City & State New York interview, though, he demonstrated minimal familiarity with the most basic aspects of the City Council and its work — he did not know how many members the Council is composed of (51), or the approximate size of the city’s operating budget ($110 billion).

Salaam’s platform, which he has termed an “Equity and Empowerment Agenda,” includes advocacy for affordable housing and protection from eviction, economic development opportunities for workers, entrepreneurs and small businesses, bolstering criminal justice reform, and narrowing the scope of the NYPD.

Under bolstering criminal justice reform, Salaam says he will fight to end qualified immunity for police officers and increase funding for public defenders, and under narrowing the scope of the NYPD, he says he will invest in mental health, after-school, and wrap-around services. He also aims to work toward reversing Harlem’s history as an area with a disproportionate level of social infrastructure — like drug treatment centers, safe injection sites, and shelters — that have had a negative impact on residents.

For the city’s official NYC Votes voter guide, the top three priorities he listed were building affordable housing, reducing pathways to crime, and improving public education.

“We need action yesterday to fix this issue,” Salaam said at the forum of the overabundance of treatment centers and injection sites. “One of the greatest things that we can do almost immediately is perhaps start mobile safe injection sites, so that folks don't have to worry about coming and dumping into one specific space, but that they will get a notice and know where to go.”

Salaam has said he will work to prioritize the approval of affordable housing developments, and work with city officials to create a housing plan for Harlem that takes into consideration the issues of gentrification, development, and homelessness. During the NY1 debate, he added that he would like to see the city adopt elements of its response to the migrant crisis to its housing and shelter policies.

“If they were able to solve for migrants in the way that they did, that also tells us that they most certainly can solve for the homelessness problem that we have in our community,” Salaam said during the debate. “When I think about it, we’re talking about affordable housing and deeply affordable housing that we need, and we need to build it. We need to be about the process of change for all of us.”

Salaam also supports providing sufficient funding for eviction protection services for tenants. He wants to reevaluate the current system by which affordable housing units are allocated, which relies in part on a calculation of the area median income, or AMI, which factors in the entire city and some of its suburbs.

“The rents are too high,” Salaam said. “My plan is to ensure that we get affordable housing, but affordable housing that speaks specifically to people's income levels. As I understand AMI, what they've done, which is very unfortunate, is they’ve pulled in places that have houses and homes and things of that nature, like Westchester. And so now the AMI is around $80,000.”

Salaam voiced his support for a revival of the One45 development plan at the forum.

“We need to incentivize all of the developers that are coming into our community telling us that they want to build and develop,” Salaam said. “Just like the One45 — now it's a truck stop. That's an unfortunate situation that we are experiencing right now, in a place that has the highest levels of respiratory illnesses. We need to correct that immediately, so that we can get the opportunity to provide our constituents with the type of value and life-giving support that they need, so that they can live holistically in our community.”

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by Abby Wilson, Gotham Gazette

Read more by this writer.

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by Arnav Binaykia, Gotham Gazette

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