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AGENCY TESTIMONY
Overestimation of asylum seeker costs in the city budget
3:57:50
ยท
71 sec
Comptroller Lander criticizes the Adams administration for overstating expenses related to services for asylum seekers in the city budget. He presents his office's estimates of potential savings based on current trends and expected aid.
- Lander's office estimates budgetary savings of $472 million in FY '25, $589 million in FY '26, and $1 billion in FY '27 compared to the city's budget for asylum seeker services.
- The Comptroller accuses the administration of historically inflating these costs and later reducing them in subsequent budgets.
- Lander criticizes the mayor for scapegoating immigrants and failing to provide clear invoices for allocated state funding, making it difficult to advocate for additional support.
Brad Lander
3:57:50
As I noted, the mayor's financial plan continues even now to overstate the expenses associated with services for asylum seekers given current trends and net of state and federal aid that is unlikely to materialize.
3:58:03
My office estimates budgetary savings of $472,000,000 versus the city budget for f y twenty five, '5 hundred and '80 '9 million in f y twenty six, and a full 1,000,000,000 in f y twenty seven.
3:58:17
The Adams administration, the IBO has shown as well, has historically inflated these costs only to bring them down in subsequent budgets and in negotiations with you.
3:58:28
The mayor has continued to scapegoat immigrants for his own management deficiencies while showing no urgency in providing clear invoices for what the city what state funding what state funding, excuse me, has been allocated to actually cover.
3:58:43
And the result, as you may have seen when we were up for Tin Cup Day, is that the legislators don't know how that money has been spent, and it makes it very difficult to get them to advocate for additional funding and support, and the governor's FY twenty six executive budget does not include any new resources for the city in that regard.