Mayor Adams & Speaker Adams shake on the budget deal (photo: @NYCMayor)

Mayor Eric Adams and City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams announced on Thursday a deal on a massive $107 billion budget for the 2024 fiscal year, just days before the July 1 deadline, marking the conclusion of months of contentious negotiations between the two sides of City Hall. The full Council is scheduled to vote the budget through on Friday morning.

This budget is the largest at adoption in city history, adding $6 billion in spending compared to the budget adopted last June, largely because of spending on

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

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

Mayor Adams and others tour a HERRC (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)

As the migrant asylum-seeker crisis continues to escalate, and another surge of arrivals has begun after a federal pandemic-era border policy expired last week, Mayor Eric Adams is taking increasingly desperate steps to ease the impact on New York City.

While virtually everyone agrees that the federal and state governments should do more to help the city, critics say there are still several concrete measures the mayor has failed to

Budget Director Jacques Jiha (photo: John McCarten, NYC Council Media Unit)

City Council members repeatedly clashed with budget officials from Mayor Eric Adams’ administration at a hearing on Monday, pressing for answers about an ongoing staffing crisis at city agencies that has affected the delivery of municipal services. The hearing kicked off the weeks-long process of the Council’s public examination of Mayor Adams’ $102.7 billion preliminary budget proposal for the 2024 fiscal year, which starts July 1.

The first part of the

Mayor Adams and his spending plan (photo: Benny Polatseck/Mayor's Office)

In January, Mayor Eric Adams proposed a $102.7 billion preliminary budget proposal for the 2024 fiscal year, stressing the fiscal restraint of his administration amid various budgetary risks and uncertainties facing the city. But while it would be a near-record sum in city spending if passed as-is, progressive City Council members and advocates have called it an “austerity budget” that proposes cuts to critical services that will hurt the city’s most vulnerable populations at a time when the city can afford to invest more in its

Mayor Adams hails housing construction (photo: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office)

New York City’s infrastructure construction process is broken and Mayor Eric Adams wants to fix it. 

The city’s capital budget funds infrastructure projects across the five boroughs, including new construction, maintenance, and repairs to everything from parks, schools, hospitals, and libraries to mass transit, sewers, courts, jails, police precincts, and more. But as New York City is in desperate need of sweeping infrastructure upgrades,

Housing (photo: Edwin J. Torres/Mayoral Photography Office)

It’s been well over a year since Mayor Eric Adams promised, on the campaign trail, to “immediately” form a committee to "come up with real solutions" to make New York's property tax system more fair and equitable. But Adams never formed the committee and he has not made property tax reform a priority in his first 13 months as mayor.

After 40 years of lawsuits, commissions, and half-hearted efforts at property tax reform, there is limited optimism for wholesale change,

Mayor Adams with Budget Director Jiha & Chief of Staff Varlack (photo: Benny Polatseck/Mayor's Office)

When he was running for mayor in 2021, then-Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams promised that, if elected, in his first year he would "finally" tackle a particularly thorny area of city finance that impacts all New Yorkers: property taxes. As he takes the stage to deliver his second State of the City address on Thursday, the mayor has made no apparent progress on this significant campaign promise.

Virtually everyone agrees New York City's property tax system is irrational and unfair,

Passing out ballot info (photo: John McCarten/NYC Council Media Unit)

Update: The New York City Council passed the campaign finance amendment on January 19, 2022.

The New York City Council is set to pass legislation this week that would require entities spending to influence voters in local referendums to disclose their funders.

The law would close a loophole in the city's campaign finance law that lawmakers, good government groups, and campaign finance regulators have decried for years. If signed by the mayor, so-called independent expenditures (IEs) of $5,000 or more would be

(photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)

Mayor Eric Adams on Thursday released an $102.7 billion preliminary budget for the 2024 fiscal year, which begins July 1, stressing the importance of careful spending and good fiscal management amid a variety of uncertainties and challenges.

The mayor’s latest budget proposal is up $1.7 billion from the $101 billion budget that was adopted in June 2022 for the current fiscal year and down $1.3 billion from the latest budget modification in November, which projected $104 billion in spending by the end of the current fiscal year. At least

Mayor Adams and City Council Members Announce Budget Deal (photo: Emil Cohen/NYC Council Media Unit)

Mayor Eric Adams recently ordered most city agencies to halve their budgeted vacant positions as a means of cutting costs amid fiscal portents. The plan was not accounted for in the mayor’s latest modification to the city budget, released a week prior to the personnel order, and members of the City Council are incensed about the move. Already frustrated by the large number of city agency vacancies, blamed in part on Adams’ workforce policies, many Council members are raising red flags about further

Rep. Pat Ryan with Gov. Hochul (photo: Ryan Campaign)

November 13, 2022 - Max Politics Podcast: A Winning Formula for Democrats in Tough New York Races

Chris Walsh, campaign manager for Pat Ryan's two Hudson Valley congressional wins this year and Brad Lander's 2021 NYC Comptroller win, joined the show to discuss how campaigns work, how to win tough races, Democratic messaging, the specifics of Ryan's wins, and more.

Listen to the conversation and let us know what you think, on Twitter @TweetBenMax. You can listen to the show through

Mayor Adams, Comptroller Lander, & others (photo: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office)

In a letter to City Hall last month, New York City Comptroller Brad Lander called on Mayor Eric Adams to make changes to the city's procurement rules to prevent corruption and fraud in nonprofit human services contracts.

In the October 19 letter, Lander asked Adams to convene the Procurement Policy Board (PPB) to take steps to increase contract procurement for minority- and women-owned businesses (MWBEs) and address...

Mayor Adams at a City Hall press conference (photo: Violet Mendelsund/Mayor's Office)

Earlier this year, Mayor Eric Adams pleaded with the federal government for $500 million in emergency funding to address the “humanitarian crisis” of thousands of migrant asylum seekers who have arrived in New York City in the last few months. But despite the clear health and safety risk to thousands of people, who have the right to shelter under New York law, the crisis is not the type of emergency – like the COVID-19 pandemic or

There has been a strong return to in-person entertainment in NYC (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)

The New York City economy has rebounded significantly from the depths of the covid recession but volatile economic indicators have left the city in a precarious position.

As of June, New York City’s unemployment rate reached 6.2%, down from 10.5% in June 2021. The city gained 298,600 private sector jobs from June 2021 to June 2022, reaching 3,951,000 jobs, according to the New York State Department of Labor. Tourism to the

Comptroller Brad Lander (photo: John McCarten/City Council)

According to New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, the city’s chief financial officer, “it’s a very mixed-signals moment” for the city’s economy.

On one hand, Lander said during a recent appearance on Gotham Gazette’s Max Politics podcast, the city economy is seeing increased job and business growth; while on the other hand, nationwide inflation is among the challenges now and into the

Comptroller Brad Lander (photo: Office of New York City Comptroller)

July 20, 2022 - Max Politics Podcast: Comptroller Lander on City Finances, School Budget Cuts, NYC Ferry, & More

New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, the city's chief financial officer, joined the show to discuss the city's economic and fiscal outlook, the school budget cut controversy and what to do about it, and much more.

Listen to the conversation and let us know what you think, on Twitter @TweetBenMax. You can listen to the show through

A rally for green jobs outside City Hall (photo: Jeff Reed/City Council)

In 2024, New York City will begin capping emissions from the city’s largest buildings – which are its worst polluters – under Local Law 97, which was approved as part of the city’s Climate Mobilization Act of 2019. The law requires buildings to be retrofitted with energy-efficient and sustainable systems – upgrading heating and cooling systems, possibly installing solar energy, for instance – to significantly reduce their carbon footprint to meet those emissions caps, or otherwise face hefty

Mayor Adams, Speaker Adams, and Council Members (photo: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office)

Mayor Eric Adams and City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams on Friday announced their first budget agreement, a $101 billion spending deal for the 2023 fiscal year beginning July 1, reflecting an increase of about $2.3 billion over the budget that was adopted in June of last year. 

Buoyed by higher-than-expected tax revenues and federal aid, the administration and Council massively increased the city’s reserves and invested in a long

Council Member Chi Ossé on a sanitation tour of his district (photo: John McCarten/NYC Council Media Unit)

Trash has become among the most prominent issues in this year’s New York City budget negotiations, as well as the focus of larger policy debates about how the city handles its garbage and recycling.

The infamous mountains of black bags that clutter sidewalks, the overflowing waste baskets at street corners, and the litter on city streets have all been the subject of significant attention from Mayor Eric Adams, Comptroller Brad Lander, and many members of the New York City Council,

Mayor Adams and others discuss wind energy plans (photo: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office)

New York’s sweeping Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act of 2019 set the state on a path to reaching net-zero emissions over the next three decades. The law established a Climate Action Council that drafted a framework for achieving that goal, and is now more than halfway through the process of seeking public input on its proposed plan. 

The Council held its seventh public hearing on Tuesday in Brooklyn, out of

At the stock exchange (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)

The COVID-19 pandemic has wreaked havoc on New York City’s core Central Business Districts – particularly Midtown Manhattan and Lower Manhattan – which are home to the businesses and industries that are the biggest drivers of the city’s economy.

The lockdown and stay-at-home orders forced by the pandemic changed the nature of work in the city and beyond, and though the office sector – including the information, financial and real estate, and professional and business services industries that occupy so much of the space

Rooftop solar (photo: Ethan Geringer-Sameth)

It was a small world on the roof of a five-storey co-op in West Harlem where Michael Anglin, the building’s treasurer, was showing off its solar panels.

New York City Comptroller Brad Lander and a team from his office were touring the configuration to understand what went into installing it in the heavily-regulated city, considered by industry insiders to be one of the hardest markets in the world to erect solar panels. Also there was Rit Aggarwala, Lander's long-time associate

Infrastructure in action (photo: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office)

In November, Congress approved President Joe Biden’s $1.2 trillion infrastructure plan, which is expected to deliver tens of billions of dollars to New York City for crucial needs. As the city prepares for the influx of federal funds, experts are pointing to several priorities that they believe Mayor Eric Adams should pursue, and the new Democratic mayor will no doubt be evaluating his priorities as he continues to map out his own infrastructure plans, including through budget negotiations with the