City’s largest public union sues Adams admin over budget cuts

NEW YORK — The city’s largest public-sector union sued Mayor Eric Adams and his administration Wednesday over looming budget cuts, POLITICO can first report — the latest sign the planned spending reductions are hurting the mayor’s political coalition at a particularly difficult time in Adams’ tenure.

DC 37 — an early and vocal backer of Adams in the 2021 mayoral primary — filed suit in state Supreme Court in Manhattan, accusing the mayor and his administration of failing to properly vet a decision to nix thousands of union jobs as city officials seek to close an anticipated $7 billion budget gap.

“The approach to deal with this budget deficit has been short-sighted,” Henry Garrido, the union’s executive director, said in an interview. “When you exclusively cut services to deal with a shortfall and you don’t pursue revenue collection options that you have … the public gets more upset at city workers because the garbage takes longer to be picked up, it takes longer to take care of their calls and it takes longer to deal with emergencies.”

In its suit, the labor organization is alleging the city did not conduct a required cost-benefit analysis before proposing cuts that would slash 2,300 “job training participants” in the parks and sanitation departments — positions Garrido believes will now be filled with non-union contractors.

Mayoral spokesperson Liz Garcia said the city has been balancing the budget in the face of serious economic headwinds without layoffs and with minimal disruption to services. She also noted that Adams recently negotiated new contracts with the city's unionized workforce — including 90,000 DC 37 employees.

"We are confident that we took all appropriate steps in preparing the November Plan, and we will review the complaint.”

DC 37 took former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration to court over Covid vaccine mandates. But this marks the first instance of the union suing the Adams administration — a move that highlights the strains budgets are placing on backers of the mayor.

It would appear public sentiment is on Garrido’s side.

In a recent Quinnipiac University poll, 83 percent of New Yorkers reported being concerned that the mayor’s planned budget cuts would impact their daily lives. The mayor also received a record-low job approval rating of 28 percent in that survey.

Wednesday’s lawsuit is the latest instance of Garrido registering complaints about how the city is going about trimming its $110 billion budget. On Monday, he blasted the cuts more broadly during a City Council hearing, saying the mandate “is not only unfair [and] unjustified, it really makes a mockery of the process that we have of the counterbalances in governments in the city of New York."

On Wednesday, Garrido argued cutting DC 37 workers wholesale from some divisions while leaving others in city government untouched is another affront to his members.

“The way [the Office of Management and Budget] is trying to get to a point of reducing the budget is wrong, and is disproportionately hurting some of our members more than other workers,” he said.

However, he stopped short of saying the spending reductions have turned him off Adams completely.

Garrido said he plans to back the mayor in his efforts to secure more funds for asylum seekers by lobbying Albany officials, and is heading to the White House for a meeting Thursday on the matter.

“We’re still supporting [Adams],” Garrido said. “I don’t think this is directed at him. He has been given a real raw deal with this migrant situation.”