Eric Adams has been serving as New York City’s 110th mayor since 2022 after spending more than 20 years with the New York City Police Department and retiring as captain. Eric Adams served as Brooklyn Borough President from 2014-2021 and was a New York Senator from 2007-2013. Eric Adams claims that since he is a proud son of Brownsville and has a career dedicated to the betterment of N.Y.C. that exceeds three decades, he can empathize with the average New Yorker.
Credit: People
During the time Mayor Adams has been in the mayoral office, he has been under fire on several fronts. On December 6, 2023, several news outlets reported that Mayor Adams’ approval ratings had hit a new low of below 30%. This is the lowest rating for any N.Y.C mayor since 1996. This low approval rating comes after Adams announced the city’s broad budget cuts, headlines about a federal-level investigation regarding his 2021 campaign, and a sexual assault accusation. Mayor Adams still claims he can empathize with the average New Yorker, but this new rating and all of the scandals he has managed to accumulate show that the average New Yorker is displeased with his City Hall job and now, his character.
On November 16, 2023, Eric announced 4 billion dollar budget cuts over the next year and a half. As a former police officer, Eric campaigned on public safety but plans to cut the NYPD’s $5.6 billion budget by $132 million. Many have reported that these cuts will cause NYPD staffing levels to return to the same level they were during the crime epidemic of the 80s and 90s. City Hall has also proposed to cut the overall funding of public schools and claw back $109 million from city classrooms. These cuts mean that the midyear budget crisis will hit 43% of the public school system. Most libraries will also see major cuts as they will reduce hours by eliminating the seven-day services they once provided. The New York City’s Department of Sanitation is also expected to undergo a budget cut of 5.5 million dollars. This means that there will be fewer litter baskets, fewer sidewalk cleanups, and the possibility that a notoriously dirty city will somehow get even dirtier.
Mayor Adams claims that these budget cuts were made in response to the rising costs of the migrant crisis. Eric stated, “No city should be left to handle a national humanitarian crisis largely on its own, and without the significant and timely support we need from Washington, D.C., today’s budget will be only the beginning.” While this is true, is it fair to say that the migrant crisis is the sole reason for the city’s $7 billion budget deficit?
Credit: New York Times
A financial crisis takes years to build, and New York City did have its era of overspending. For example, the mayor who served before Eric Adams, Bill Deblasio, spent $1 billion on a disastrous mental health initiative that failed to take off. During Bill Deblasio’s term, he also had to deal with unsettled labor contracts that his predecessor left him with and this also cost a pretty penny. Money is such a fickle thing, but the city’s heavy spending did manage to outpace inflation up until the pandemic. Eric Adams wasn’t in office at the time, but the job of a mayor is not discrete and is instead a continuous process. Mayor Adams inherited a city that lacked fiscal discipline and was already in a weakened economic state.
One could give Eric Adams the benefit of the doubt and say that he’s been forced to make some tough decisions. However, he is the mayor which means that his decisions have very serious and immediate effects on the well-being and equity of New Yorkers. There is also the fact that outside of New York City’s budget crisis, Mayor Adams is under public scrutiny for things a politician should not be given the benefit of the doubt for.
Just last month, the FBI seized Mayor Adams’s phone as part of a federal investigation into the fundraising of his 2021 campaign. So far, Mayor Adams has not been accused of any wrongdoings, but he can be added to the list of politicians to come under scrutiny for ties to a foreign government- in his case Turkey. The seizure of his phone followed the FBI raiding of Adams’ chief fundraiser’s home. Mayor Adams maintains the front that he has done nothing wrong, but only time will tell.
Right now the shady mishandling of Mayor Adams’s campaign funds is nothing but an accusation, but this is not the only accusation tied to his name. A recent summons filed under New York’s Adult Survivors Act ties Mayor Adams to a sexual assault allegation for events in 1993. The summons said that the “[p]laintiff was sexually assaulted by Defendant Eric Adams in New York, New York in 1993 while they both worked for the City of New York”. The summons also reported that “the claims brought here allege intentional and negligent acts and omissions for physical, psychological, and other injuries suffered as a result of conduct that would constitute sexual offenses.” Once again, Eric Adams takes the stance that he has done nothing wrong, and these allegations are “absolutely not true”.
Nobody expects Mayor Adams to take the blame for things if he actually hasn’t done anything wrong, but it is still his responsibility to prove himself as mayor. New Yorkers shouldn’t be left to assume that he can get the job done or hope that he is an honest person. In an ideal world, mayors do just exactly what their titles require: effectively manage the general welfare of a city. Mayor Adams’s performance shouldn’t leave any room for grey areas, but since it does it feels like he has spent his time at City Hall doing everything but nothing at the same time.