Teachers’ union sues Mayor Eric Adams over budget cuts

NEW YORK — The United Federation of Teachers filed a lawsuit against New York City Mayor Eric Adams on Thursday in an effort to block his slashing of education funding — challenging his cost projection for providing migrant services in the process.

The politically influential UFT joins fellow municipal union District Council 37 in taking Adams to court over budget cuts the mayor argues are necessary to alleviate the fiscal hardship caused in large part by the cost of supporting a recent influx of asylum seekers.

The teachers’ union, which filed its suit in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, names the state Department of Education as a defendant. The union charges that Adams’ claim that the migrant surge will cost $11 billion over the next two years is “an unverified estimate.”

“The administration can’t go around touting the tourism recovery and the return of the city’s pre-pandemic jobs, and then create a fiscal crisis and cut education because of its own mismanagement of the asylum seeker problem,” UFT President Michael Mulgrew said in a statement Thursday.

The suit follows DC 37, the city’s largest public-sector union, which accused the mayor and his administration of failing to properly vet a decision to nix thousands of union jobs as city officials look to close an anticipated $7 billion budget gap, POLITICO reported. That lawsuit was filed in the same court earlier this month.

Adams’ November financial plan seeks 5 percent cuts across city agencies — followed by two more cuts of 5 percent each next year — and the UFT says schools could see as much as $2 billion in funding lost.

The mayor, at a City Hall event Thursday highlighting the growth in jobs and drop in crime under his administration this year, sought to downplay the two lawsuits.

“Henry’s a friend. He has to represent his members,” Adams told reporters of DC 37 Executive Director Henry Garrido. “The same with the UFT. They have to represent their members. And from time to time, friends disagree. And sometimes it ends up in the boardroom and sometimes it ends up in the courtroom.”

The mayor said the broad budget cuts pain him as much as they pain everyday New Yorkers, again calling the 67,000 migrants in the city’s care an “unforeseeable crisis.”

The service reductions are deeply unpopular, with more than eight in 10 voters recently telling Quinnipiac University pollsters that they believe the cuts to the NYPD, libraries, schools and other city agencies will impact their daily lives. Additionally, a coalition of labor leaders, immigrant and education advocates and left-leaning City Council members have protested the cuts.

The UFT alleges that as the state increased education funding to city public schools, the city illegally slashed its contribution with the budget reductions.

It charges in the lawsuit: “The cuts are being made at a time when the City collected nearly $8 billion more in revenue last fiscal year than was anticipated, and when the City’s reserves of over $8 billion are at a near record high (despite the false narrative, an annual refrain during budget negotiations, that the City is careening towards a fiscal cliff).”

Adams concluded his year-end news conference Tuesday on a lighter note, saying New Yorkers have a variety of opinions about him.

“Some give me the thumbs up and others give me another finger, you know?” he said. “That’s New Yorkers. I wake up in the morning and sometimes I look at myself and I give myself the finger.”