NEW YORK (1010 WINS/WCBS 880) -- After the City Council passed a $112.4 billion city budget Sunday, reversing almost all proposed budget cuts, Mayor Eric Adams told 1010 WINS on Monday that "teamwork makes the dream work."
"We spent months, as there was a lot of noise around us, the team was inside figuring out how do we deal with the crises that we're facing?" the mayor told 1010 WINS anchor Scott Stanford.
The 46-3 vote, which came down to the day of the deadline, followed months of negotiations and will fund the city government from July 1 to June 30, 2025. Among other things, the budget deal reverses all cuts to the public libraries and allocates another $2 billion for housing, bringing the total housing capital commitment to a record $26 billion.
The mayor said when he took office in January 2022, he told all city agencies to find ways to close a $7.1 billion budget gap and they delivered.
"Because of those efficiencies—where over $7 billion we found in efficiencies—we were able to navigate COVID and navigate 200,000 migrants and asylum seekers that cost us $4.9 billion," the mayor said. "Smart decisions early allowed us to make these decisions that we're making today."
The mayor said the budget address the three things that cost New Yorkers the most: housing, childcare, and health care.
The City Council also overrode Adams' vetoes to ban solitary confinement in city jails and pass the "How Many Stops Act," a transparency law that requires NYPD officers to record the race, age and gender of most people they stop during investigations.
The mayor said he still has reservations about the legislation.
"I think the intentions were correct, but the actual application of it was just the wrong thing to do at this time," Adams said. "We need our officers on patrol, not doing paperwork. But it's the law, and we must follow the law."
Adams said that Michael Gerber, the NYPD's deputy commissioner for legal matters, told him the training has already been put into place and that his administration will "follow the law as it is carried out."
The mayor also reacted to President Joe Biden's poor performance against former President Donald Trump at last week's debate, the first of the 2024 presidential race. Biden's performance has many Democrats calling for the president to drop out of the race and pass the torch to another Democrat.
Indeed, a CBS News poll released found 72% of registered voters believe Biden doesn't have the mental and cognitive health to serve as president, with only 27% believing that he does.
Adams said he still supports Biden staying in the race and won't judge him on a single debate.
"I felt as though how I feel sometimes—people take your worst performance and they, you know, try to judge your entire life that way," the mayor said. "I don't take the president's worst performance—listen, he started out slow. He seemed to pick up as we were going on."
"But here's a person who navigated our economy in the right direction, dealt with the law enforcement issues," the mayor continued. "He's continuously showing real, true leadership. So I believe the Democratic Party will come together and make a determination on next steps. But I know how it is when my performance is not my best and I'm defined by that. And I know he feels that way. It wasn't his best performance, but he has performed admirably throughout his career in politics."
Asked about Trump saying at the debate that migrants are taking "Black jobs" and "Hispanic jobs," Adams said he's focused on "the fact we should allow migrants and asylum seekers to work."
"We have open jobs in all areas," the mayor said, "from those in the horse racing industry, to lifeguards, to medical professionals. We need employees. And so to me it doesn't matter the ethnicity of the employee, but no one should come to this country, where work is part of dignity—and I think that we need to allow migrants and asylum seekers to work, and how we have cut unemployment here in the city, we could continue to do so if we allow people the opportunity to work."