City Comptroller Brad Lander, who is running for mayor, urged Mayor Eric Adams to present a clear “contingency plan” for keeping the city running following the Monday resignation of four deputy mayors — or he will move to convene a panel that could remove Adams from office.
Lander, during a Tuesday morning news conference at his Lower Manhattan office, said he was set to meet with Gov. Kathy Hochul in the afternoon to discuss the committee that could remove Adams and the prospect of her ousting the mayor herself.
The comptroller sent a letter to Adams on Monday requesting that he provide a contingency plan by Friday, or face him convening the panel, known as the Committee on Mayoral Inability.
“If he fails or refuses to provide a clear contingency plan for how New Yorkers can rely on the services that make this city run, then, as I said, I will be reaching out to other members of the Committee on Mayoral Inability to discuss the question of whether the mayor can discharge the powers and duties of the office of the mayor,” Lander said. “How is the city getting guaranteed a continuity of the operations they rely on again every single day?”
In addition to the comptroller, the committee would also include City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, Corporation Counsel Muriel Goode-Trufant, a deputy mayor of Adams’ choosing, and Queens Borough President Donovan Richards — who has served the longest out of the city’s five beeps.
Lander’s comments and summit with Hochul come as she is holding several other meetings with top city officials on Feb. 18 to consider removing Adams. They follow President Trump’s Justice Department ordering Adams’ corruption charges to be dropped last week in what many allege is a quid pro quo for his cooperation with the president’s immigration crackdown.
The comptroller said the impending departure of the four deputy mayors, who oversee vast swaths of city government, could create an “unprecedented leadership vacuum in the weeks to come.” Although the deputy mayors — Maria Torres-Springer, Meera Joshi, Anne Williams-Isom, and Chauncey Parker — are not leaving immediately, they have yet to provide their official departure dates.
Mayoral spokesperson Kayla Mamelak Altus said in a statement that the administration would respond to Lander’s letter without going into details on what that response would include.
“All deputy mayors remain in their roles for the time being to ensure a seamless transition, and we are actively working to find their replacements,” she said.
Torres-Springer had held the role of first deputy mayor since last fall when she stepped into the position to stabilize the administration after her predecessor — Sheena Wright — had her home raided by federal agents in connection with a separate probe. Parker came into his role of deputy mayor for public safety in a similar fashion, taking over the position from Phil Banks, who also resigned after having his home searched by the feds.
Lander said he would prefer for Adams to resign of his own accord while keeping the four outgoing deputy mayors in place to “ensure a continuity of services.”
“I can’t say that’s what I expect the response will be,” Lander said, pointing to Adams lashing out at his critics on Monday in the face of the deputy mayors’ resignations.
“If he has a different plan for what he will do in the face of the resignation of these deputy mayors, he needs to lay it out. And if he doesn’t lay it out, then conversations have to continue about how to make sure that those duties are met,” he added.
However, there is debate over whether the inability committee was specifically intended for mayors who are physically unable to do their jobs due to illness or if it applies more broadly. Lander said he takes the latter view.
“Is the mayor able to discharge the powers and duties of the office of the mayor under the city charter at this time?” Lander said. “Those are all questions that New Yorkers are asking, and that is a question that Section 10 of the City Charter assigns to a set of people. And did they envision this particular set of circumstances? They did not envision this particular set of circumstances.”
