NYC Mayor Adams, Council members clash on how to pay for costs from migrant crisis

Mayor Adams and City Council members locked horns Wednesday over how city government should bankroll aid to the thousands of migrants who have come here this year — with the mayor arguing lawmakers should dip into their own discretionary funding to foot the bill.

Adams’ suggestion that City Council members use funding typically reserved for their own pet causes came after two days of Council hearings devoted to the migrant crisis.

“You had Council members and others saying let’s give free cell phones to asylum seekers, let’s give free MetroCards, let’s give free rent, let’s give free, free, free, free. We’re not giving this to everyday New Yorkers,” he told the Daily News editorial board Wednesday.

“Everyday New Yorkers are not getting free cell phones,” he continued. “They’re not getting free MetroCards. So if the City Council is telling me — some of the City Council, I should say — is telling me that the asylum seekers and the migrants should get everything free from taxpayers, then I’m going to have to cut services.”

Hizzoner urged that Council members advocating for such largesse should “give us half of your member items.”

“They said this was an important issue. They did two days of hearings. They called and said, ‘Listen, spend more money,’” Adams said. “Then we need to all be in this together.”

The response to his suggestion was swift — and harsh.

Councilwoman Crystal Hudson (D-Brooklyn) used his remarks to frame cuts the mayor already proposed as part of his November budget modification — cuts she said she’d oppose.

“Slashing funding from vital city resources while simultaneously gutting the agencies that offer our neighbors care and support is wholly irresponsible and negligent,” she said in a statement, adding that Adams is ”more concerned about waging political battles than truly getting stuff done.”

Adams conceded he has no real power over how Council members use their discretionary funding, and instead cast his remarks as more of a suggestion, however controversial.

“I don’t have the ability to tell them: Cut your member items by 50%. I’m saying, ‘Hey, throw money into the pot. This is our request of you,’” he said.

The Council’s 34-member Black, Latino and Asian Caucus frowned upon the mayor’s ask.

“For years, the New York City Council has provided grants to support non-profit service providers that serve as lifelines to communities of color. The mayor’s request to slash these resources for communities by 50% is counterproductive and would only harm the health and safety of Black and brown New Yorkers,” the caucus said in a written statement.

Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, who is not related to the mayor, shot back that the Council can’t “allow the mayor’s suggestion that we cut a lifeline.”

“These a service providers — viable, needed service providers,” she said of the non-profits that could expect to see cuts if Council members direct discretionary funding to the migrant crisis.

“What we should be asking is why the administration is being so opaque about its spending on contracts during the asylum seeker crisis.”

The Council Speaker noted that it is still unclear how much the administration paid to construct a tent shelter on Randall’s Island.

“We can’t let the mayor place the city’s challenges even further on the shoulders of non-profit service providers that we are asking to do more because of a lack of resources in the administration,” she said.

Another Council member, who asked to remain anonymous, said the mayor’s statements seemed like a declaration of war, adding that it would almost certainly have ramifications for the passage of Hizzoner’s budget modification.

“It’s just very ill advised and hard for us to take it any other way than he wants war,” the member said of Adams’ discretionary funding ask. “If you cut the agencies, people rely on the non-profits more. Now you wanna cut the non-profits?”