Today, Council Member Tiffany Cabán released the following statement:

From the beginning of his term, the Mayor’s budgetary priorities have been clear: make devastating slashes to the vital social services that are the backbone of community safety and public health, while continuing to overfund ineffective, harmful policing and incarceration strategies.

Check the record:

  • Last year, he made $469 Million in cuts to our schools.
  • He has forced agencies to slash their budgets again and again through so-called “PEGs,” which cut working New Yorkers off from the services they need and deserve.
  • He’s threatened City Council discretionary budgets, which fund senior centers, after-school programs, and more.
  • Most recently, his proposed November modification of the FY23 budget would have made searing cuts to public libraries, CUNY, public schools and more – the Council considered this modification so dangerous and cruel we have refused even to bring it up for a vote.

His budget overview today took the same approach as last year’s: plenty of platitudes, lots of shiny rhetoric… and next to no specifics. Of course, he didn’t release any actual documents before his promotional presentation.

Rest assured, however, I am one hundred percent committed to uncovering any cuts to social services he may be hoping to hide deep down in the details, and fighting them with everything I’ve got. Austerity is a recipe for suffering, plain and simple, and I will expose it wherever it rears its ugly head.

We know how to make New York City safer and healthier. We need historic investments in social housing, non-violent mental health outreach, and community-based violence-interruption programming. We need dramatic increases in funding to public health, public education, clean energy, and safe streets. And we need to decarcerate and permanently shutter Rikers Island and significantly reduce our reliance on policing as a primary response to a wide array of social challenges.

I am excited to fight alongside Speaker Adams, Finance Chair Brannan, and the rest of my colleagues in the Council to ensure that our commitments to true public safety and public health win the day, and the Mayor is unable to advance a disastrous austerity agenda that would cause everyday New Yorkers so much pain.