NYC Council Speaker Adams sets up fight with mayor as she calls for more oversight of City Hall: ‘Watch this!’

City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams ramped up her challenge to the mayor Wednesday as she laid out her legislative plan for the year — including boosting oversight of City Hall.

The speaker announced the creation of a new Council-led report to evaluate the performance of city agencies, saying that the annual Mayor’s Management Report put out by City Hall wasn’t providing the “full picture.”

“I’m prepared, Mr. Mayor, to lead by example,” the speaker said, looking down at Mayor Eric Adams in the front row, as she briefly went off script during her State of the City address.

“Watch this!”

Leading with a trio of New Yorkers lamenting the financial strain of housing and daycare costs, her address — delivered from the BAM Howard Gilman Opera House in Brooklyn — was a sharp departure from the mayor’s rosy State of the City speech in January.

The speaker highlighted issues she believes make living in the Big Apple a burden, such as affordability and housing — as she doubled down on a contentious housing voucher program that Adams has opposed.

The newly-proposed oversight report is likely to set up more bouts with Mayor Adams’ administration following a blistering back-and-forth over the budget and the Council overriding Hizzoner’s vetoes of three bills.

“The Council will begin conducting its own performance evaluations of city agencies, issuing report cards for individual agencies on their delivery of services to New Yorkers.”

One of the breaks between City Hall and the legislative body came over a bill of reforms to the CityFHEPS housing voucher program, which the Adams administration has refused to implement, leading to a court battle with the Legal Aid Society and the Council.

The administration has said it cannot implement the changes — which fast-track the voucher process for those facing eviction — because the $17 billion price tag was too high as the city grapples with the cost of the ongoing migrant crisis.

The Council has pegged the price tag at $7 billion.

“As a co-equal branch of government, our duty is to turn these ideas into effective laws and to conduct oversight,” Speaker Adams said Wednesday.

“But laws and policies are only as good as their implementation.”

One Council source said the speaker “seemed to be going for the jugular.”

“The CityFHEPS part is definitely a slap in the face,” the source said.

The speaker also issued a plea for help with the affordability crisis, calling the issue “dire” with high rents and burdensome childcare costs for New Yorkers.

“We are losing working- and middle-class families, who are leaving New York at the fastest rate of any New Yorkers,” Adams said, adding, “What this tells us is that as a government, we are not fulfilling our duty to New Yorkers.“

“We must make New York livable for all. If we don’t, we’ll lose the very backbone of our city and the diversity that powers us.”

But she made no mention of budget woes from the migrant crisis. The issue has been another source of strife for the Council and the Adams administration, which rolled out waves of steep budget cuts to cover the cost of caring and housing for tens of thousands of asylum seekers, estimated to hit $10 billion next fiscal year.

The Council had argued that the mayor was underestimating its revenue projections, and that the city wasn’t in dire fiscal shape necessitating the cuts. Adams ended up reversing some of the cuts due to higher-than-anticipated tax revenue.

“The migrant crisis is crushing the city budget but didn’t even get a single mention in the State of the City speech,” another Council source said. “It was a speech with a lot of words but missed the mark on addressing the major problems the city faces.”

City Hall insisted the mayor and speaker share the same priorities for New Yorkers.

“We look forward to digging into the speaker’s proposals and continuing to build on two years of collaboration with her and the City Council to deliver on our shared goals and make sure the city we all love works for working-class New Yorkers,” said mayoral spokesperson Charles Lutvak.