District Council 37, the city’s largest municipal union, sued Mayor Eric Adams and his administration Wednesday over his recent 5% reductions to city agency budgets.
In the suit, which was filed in New York County (Manhattan) Supreme Court on Dec. 12, DC37 accuses the administration of not following the proper procedure in planning to cut around 2,300 Job Training Participant (JTP) positions represented by the union and replace them with privately-contracted workers.
The move is part of the mayor’s wide-ranging budget cuts as part of his Program to Eliminate the Gap (PEG) last month, which are aimed at closing a projected $7.1 billion deficit over the next fiscal year purportedly driven by the escalating expense of the migrant crisis.
The suit was first reported by Politico New York on Dec. 13.
Specifically, DC37 Executive Director Henry Garrido alleges the city did not conduct a legally required cost-benefit analysis before making plans to nix the positions in question at the Parks and Sanitation Departments — which he believes will be replaced with privately contracted workers.
Garrido said the move violates Local Law 63, which established a procedure the city must abide by when it solicits contract work valued at over $200,000. One required step of that procedure, according to the union boss, is to assess whether procuring the private services would lead to a reduction in city-funded positions.
“We understand this administration is facing unprecedented obstacles with the influx of migrants arriving to New York, but city workers should not be the scapegoat for this crisis, nor the target of these reactionary budget reductions,” Garrido said in a statement. “New Yorkers are already suffering from the gaps in service caused by the 20,000 plus vacancies that existed before the latest round of PEG cuts. Replacing these JTP workers with contracts is not only costly and short-sighted, it’s an illegal disservice to the working class people who occupy those jobs.”
Mayoral spokesperson Liz Garcia, in a statement, responded that the administration balanced the budget in November in the face of numerous fiscal challenges and expenses, including settling contracts for unions like DC37.
“We are confident that we took all appropriate steps in preparing the November Plan, and we will review the complaint,” Garcia said, referring to the November Financial Plan that contained the budget cuts.
The JTP workers are public assistance recipients who are required to work to receive their benefits, the suit says — meaning they are in danger of losing their benefits if their positions are cut.
“This is not a 5% or 15% decrease as announced by the mayor– it is a 100% cut of mostly women and people of color who serve our city,” Garrido said. “Now they are being deprived of their healthcare benefits and a pathway to a good-paying union job while the city replaces them with temporary contract staff.”
Latest wave of backlash
The DC37 suit is just the latest instance of fierce backlash against the mayor’s latest belt-tightening measure. Earlier this week, Garrido, along with other opponents of Adams’ budget cuts, casted the trims as dangerous and unnecessary during an 11-hour City Council hearing.
Furthermore, a Quinnipiac University poll last week found that most New Yorkers are concerned about the impact of the mayor’s budget cuts and dissaprove of his fiscal management.
The council argues that while the city has real fiscal challenges, it has the resources to weather them without slashing vital services. In particular, they point to their projection of $1.2 billion more in revenue for the current fiscal year than is estimated by the mayor’s budget office.
Additionally, a report from the city’s Independent Budget Office (IBO) earlier this week assessed next year’s budget shortfall as being $5.3 billion lower than the $7 billion gap projectd by the mayor’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB). The independent budget watchdog also projects the city will end the year with a surplus $3.6 billion greater than what OMB predicted.
Nonetheless, Adams insisted the cuts are necessary during a Tuesday press conference, given that he must deliver a balanced budget by law and it does not appear that the federal government plans to furnish the city with substantial migrant crisis aid any time soon.
“[We] must balance the budget every two years by law,” the mayor said. “There’s a certain amount of money that comes in, we have to pay the bills going out. That’s by law … and we have a $7 billion hole.”
