News

The LGBTQ leaders in New York politics.

Mayoral control has achieved, at best, mixed results.

The administration plans to increase NYPD spending by roughly $182 million, bringing the department’s budget to $5.6 billion and one of the most contentious fiscal issues back to the foreground.

NEW YORK — Mayor Eric Adams demanded his agencies cut their budgets upon taking office. Now New York City’s progressive movement is organizing in opposition. “The People’s Plan” — an alliance that recently launched in response to the executive budget — critiques the policies of a mayor who defeated several of the progressive movement’s preferred candidates in last year’s Democratic primary.

NEW YORK — Mayor Eric Adams had just finished announcing the launch of a controversial police unit dedicated to rooting out illegal handguns and was headed to City Hall as more than 100 politicians and activists gathered outside the Tweed Courthouse, around the corner from his office. The demonstrators — united under a new left-leaning alliance called “The People’s Plan” that has been several years in the making — were opposing as reductive and dangerous the very initiative Adams considers a necessary step in curbing the rise in violence across New York City. Instead, they called on him to invest more money in an array of municipal services.

Dozens of City Council members and advocates pushed back hard against Mayor Adams’ budget plan Wednesday, arguing that cuts he’s proposing to housing and education would hurt New Yorkers still struggling with the pandemic’s fallout. To fight cuts like those, 10 Council members and dozens of community leaders signed on to what they described as the “People’s Response” to the budget. Included among them are Council members De La Rosa (D-Washington Heights), Shekar Krishnan (D-Jackson Heights), Crystal Hudson (D-Prospect Heights) and Tiffany Caban (D-Astoria) among others. Along with the advocates who signed on to the statement, the group is calling itself the People’s Plan.