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Q&A
Council discusses potential federal funding cuts and city's response plan
0:37:06
·
3 min
Council Member Adrienne E. Adams and Jacques Jiha from the NYC Mayor's Office of Management and Budget discuss the potential impact of federal funding cuts on the city's budget and services. Jiha emphasizes the city's commitment to fight for every federal dollar while acknowledging the need for contingency planning.
- The city's FY 2026 budget includes over $7.4 billion in federal funds across many agencies.
- Jiha states that no municipality has the resources to fully backfill federal funding if cut.
- OMB agrees to work collaboratively with the city council to create a plan, while being cautious not to signal to DC that funding can be cut without consequences.
Adrienne E. Adams
0:37:06
Let's look a little at potential federal cuts.
0:37:10
Right now the fiscal twenty twenty six budget includes over $7,400,000,000 of federal funds allocated across many city agencies, but we're all well aware that there's a very real chance that come November this estimate may need to be decreased.
0:37:25
What safeguards do you have in place to make sure that critical city services are not interrupted if this happens?
Jacques Jiha
0:37:33
Madam speaker, we will fight for every federal dollar that New Yorkers deserve.
0:37:43
New Yorkers pay their fair share of federal taxes and should not be penalized simply because the city is following state and local laws.
0:37:57
So we will continue to fight as hard as we can, okay, to make sure that we get every dollar that we deserve.
0:38:06
Now if for whatever reason we lose some of our legal challenges, we will basically we have a decision matrix that we go in house, we review, we assess every single one of these programs.
0:38:25
And if the program is deemed to be very critical, we will come back to the mayor and the council with recommendations in terms of what to backfill, to what not to backfill.
0:38:36
But what we said before, and we'll continue to maintain the same posture, is given the scope, the size of the amount of money that is involved, no municipality has the resources to backfill federal funding.
0:38:53
Understood.
0:38:54
Okay.
0:38:55
So we have to keep fighting.
Adrienne E. Adams
0:38:57
Understood all of that, and and and surely New York City is not the only place in this country that is at jeopardy right now.
0:39:05
Yes.
0:39:05
For federal funding loss.
0:39:07
What what I'd like to hear though is that will OMB work with work with the city council to create a plan?
Jacques Jiha
0:39:14
Of course.
0:39:15
As I said, every decision, every program the challenge that we have is we don't wanna send signal, okay, to DC that it's okay to cut funding with impunity because, hey, every case that we're making is causing harm to the city.
0:39:37
Okay, so you don't want to create a plan that says, hey, I have resources to backfill all of these things, so in that case there is no
Preston Niblack
0:39:43
harm.
0:39:44
Understood.
Jacques Jiha
0:39:45
Okay.
0:39:45
So therefore, we don't want to telegraph, okay, all the steps, all the measures that we plan on taking.
0:39:54
But we will definitely work with the council because this is our job to basically to face the challenge together because in the extreme case it would be very challenging for the city to deal with this thing.
Adrienne E. Adams
0:40:08
I agree a %.