NYC budget talks come down to the wire as sticking points remain

Chris Sommerfeldt and Josephine Stratman, New York Daily News on Jun 26, 2025

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NEW YORK — Negotiations on this year’s New York City government budget are coming down to the wire — with several sticking points remaining as talks turned tense Thursday between City Council Democrats and Mayor Eric Adams’ administration, according to sources familiar with the matter.

The hope was initially for the mayor and City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams to announce a handshake deal on the budget Friday. By law, the budget must be adopted before Tuesday, the start of the city’s 2026 fiscal year.

But funding legal assistance for immigrants — an issue many see as especially critical amid President Donald Trump’s controversial “mass deportation” crackdown — has created a fault line that some Council sources told The New York Daily News made them unsure the Friday handshake could still happen.

The mayor, who has faced criticism over his budding ties to Trump since the dismissal of the mayor’s corruption indictment, is proposing to earmark an additional $4.4 million in annual funding for nonprofits providing immigrants with legal services in the 2026 fiscal year budget.

Council Democrats, though, have called for bumping that number up significantly, though it wasn’t immediately clear just how big of an increase they’d like to see.

The clash over the funding levels came to a head Friday, when Brooklyn Councilman Justin Brannan, the Council’s Finance Committee chairman, pressed the case in a negotiation session with the mayor’s advisers that they need to agree to jack up the funding to ensure the city can protect local immigrant communities, according to sources briefed on the discussions. Several sources described the interaction as heated and combative.

Adams spokeswoman Liz Garcia wouldn’t comment on the timing of a handshake deal, but claimed Council members pushing for more city funding are misguided.

“Mayor Adams will continue to advocate for state and federal funding — as he always has — especially given that we are not receiving any new support from other levels of government,” Garcia said. “We urge these elected leaders and advocates to make good use of their time and do the same.”

According to the sources, friction also remains between the two sides over issues related to funding for some childcare and mental health programs, among other snags.

In 2022, the mayor and the speaker reached a budget deal weeks before the deadline. But every year since, they haven’t cut a deal until just a few days before the deadline amid sharp policy differences between the two sides, especially as the mayor has enacted and proposed steep cuts to many agency budgets in some years, including public libraries.

In a rally on the steps of City Hall on Thursday morning, Speaker Adams, who mounted an unsuccessful bid for mayor in this week’s Democratic primary, highlighted how the immigrant legal funding issue is key for her members this year.

“This is especially important as we see Trump’s administration exploiting the legal system to target mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, daughters and sons, despite the fact that they are doing everything asked of them to comply with the legal process,” she said, referencing the Trump administration’s efforts to detain asylum seekers at courthouses as they appear for routine check-ins.

“It is just unacceptable to have a budget that doesn’t meet the moment,” Brooklyn Councilwoman Alexa Aviles, chairwoman of the body’s Immigration Committee, said. “The $4 million being offered by the mayor is simply not enough. Our service providers are drowning.”