NEW YORK — New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’s proposed guardrails on Mayor Eric Adams are going nowhere.
It’s been more than a month since Hochul announced with great fanfare her plan to layer the New York City mayor with additional oversight to prevent the influence of President Donald Trump.
But a misunderstanding of New York City politics and a plan unpalatable to most City Council members — who must approve the framework before the state Legislature can consider it — meant the wheels began coming off the governor’s proposal soon after she set it in motion.
“We had a preliminary conversation a few weeks ago and there were a lot of questions and concerns raised by Council members that I think will need to be worked through before we have a package that is ready for prime time,” said Brooklyn Democrat Lincoln Restler, who chairs the Council committee that would cast a key vote on Hochul’s plan.
Nevertheless, he added, “There is a real sense of urgency from the Council that we need to take action to ensure that the office of the mayor is operating with integrity and with much more robust oversight.”
The two sides are now at a stalemate, even as the exigent circumstances Hochul leapt to address remain unchanged: Trump’s Department of Justice is still moving to dismiss the mayor’s criminal corruption case in exchange for immigration enforcement cooperation, and federal officials are still threatening to curtail funding to the municipal purse.
Talks between the Council and the state began petrifying shortly after the governor’s Feb. 20 announcement. At the time, Hochul was under pressure to remove Adams from office — a nuclear option afforded to New York governors — after allegations from a former federal prosecutor that the Department of Justice and Adams had agreed to a quid-pro-quo in exchange for dismissing his five-count bribery case. The mayor and his attorney have denied the allegation.
Instead, Hochul settled on a framework that included more state control over the city’s Department of Investigation, which played a key role in the mayor’s indictment, and funding for other state watchdogs.
“I'd like to start the proceedings immediately and then start talking to the Legislature about this,” Hochul said during her Feb. 20 announcement. “I'm not waiting until after any election. There's a crisis of confidence now.”
Hochul gave Council Speaker Adrienne Adams a heads up before debuting the guardrails, a person with knowledge of the interactions said. But in the days afterward, negotiations went sideways. As POLITICO previously reported, Hochul’s team hoped her proposal could be ratified by the Council in a matter of days — a virtual impossibility in the unwieldy assemblage of lawmakers.
“The Council is a much more deliberative body than in Albany, where you have a rush to do things at the end of the budget and the legislative cycle,” said a former city official who dealt extensively with the city legislative body and who was granted anonymity to speak candidly about the governor’s actions. “The Council has a much more consistent rhythm. They will do things, but you can’t shove them down their throat.”
The substance of Hochul’s remedy also proved too bitter for elected officials to swallow. At a Feb. 25 meeting of the body’s Democratic Conference, lawmakers balked at giving the state more power of city affairs — especially the city’s investigation department, according to several people who attended the session.
Under Hochul’s plan, DOI would provide updates about criminal investigations to the state Inspector General, which would have the power to intervene if a mayor were to try to fire the investigation commissioner.
“[DOI Commissioner Jocelyn Strauber] doesn’t want to be beholden right now,” said Council Member Gale Brewer, chair of the Committee on Oversight and Investigations. “She really is pretty free to say and do the right thing. And then secondly, the City Council didn't want to have the state telling DOI what to do. So it was like a no-win.”
The speaker’s office offered a counterproposal: Require the mayor to get approval from the Council — rather than the state inspector general — before firing a commissioner. (Though such action is rare, former Mayor Bill de Blasio canned his DOI commissioner after the release of a damning report).
The governor’s office rejected the offer, the person with knowledge of the negotiations told POLITICO, and the two sides have failed to make progress in the ensuing weeks.
The standstill has emboldened City Hall.
“There should never have been any so-called ‘guardrails’ announced by the state because, as Mayor Adams has repeatedly said, he is solely beholden to the nearly 8.5 million New Yorkers who he represents,” spokesperson Kayla Mamelak Altus said in a statement. “If any good has come from putting our city through this pointless exercise, it’s that the mayor has proven that even without these ‘guardrails,’ he has stayed true to his oath of office and continued to put New Yorkers first.”
Mamelak Altus argued that nothing has changed since the Department of Justice memo: The city still abides by sanctuary city laws that prohibit its participation in civil immigration enforcement. The mayor’s pursuit of an executive order to establish a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility on Rikers Island is anticipated in those sanctuary city statutes. And, in contradiction to Hochul’s accusations, Adams has sued the Trump administration in the hopes of recovering $80 million in FEMA money earmarked for migrant services.
That has not convinced the Council.
“Speaker Adams appreciates her productive working relationship with Governor Hochul,” spokesperson Mandela Jones said in a statement. “We are still in ongoing discussions with the governor’s office on how to best protect New York City’s government and local democracy from undue influence as a result of our mayor being compromised.”
That sentiment was shared by Hochul’s team.
“We continue to have productive conversations with the New York City Council and stand ready to advance those proposals at any time,” spokesperson Anthony Hogrebe said in a statement.
But Hogrebe included a caveat leaving the governor with some wiggle room: “This is ultimately a New York City issue, and we have no objections to the Council considering alternative actions they can advance themselves.”
Brewer and other Council members are indeed pushing for their preferred changes, like giving DOI more independence through a commission aiming to amend the City Charter via ballot proposals. But that effort faces long odds of being successful — the mayor has created a parallel commission that supersedes the Council’s effort — leaving state legislative action a more feasible option should the two sides come to a compromise.
“I understand the governor's point,” Brewer said. “She was trying to find something between getting rid of the mayor and doing something — she was trying to find a middle ground.”
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