Mayor Eric Adams announced Wednesday he is sparing city agencies a 5% cut in spending that would have totaled $4.1 billion and was slated for April.

It would have been a third round of service cuts, in part due to spending on migrant services.

“If we had to do the third round, it would impact garbage pickup, it would impact services to our older adults, it would impact libraries, it would impact a series of services that you would actually see the difference,” Adams said during an interview on WABC7.

What You Need To Know

  • Mayor Adams said he would no longer have city agencies cut spending by 5% because the city is taking in more tax revenue than anticipated 

  • The Adams administration is seeking to cut migrant spending by 10%

  • The City Council Wednesday sought to intervene on a lawsuit requiring the Adams administration to enact laws expanding a housing voucher program

The reason behind the cancellation: better-than-expected tax revenue coming to the city and a plan to cut migrant service spending by 10% or $586 million, which is on top of a previous 20% cut.

Meanwhile, the mayor and the City Council are set to take a fight on spending for housing vouchers to court.

The City Council Wednesday filed a motion to intervene in a lawsuit filed by the Legal Aid Society to compel the Adams administration to enact laws expanding a rental assistance voucher program called the City Family Homelessness and Eviction Prevention Supplement, or CityFHEPS.

The Council argues that the mayor’s “refusal not only deprives New Yorkers of housing benefits to which they are entitled under the law; it usurps the powers of the council.”

“This is one of the issues the council feels really strongly about,” Councilwoman Diana Ayala, a Manhattan Democrat, said on NY1 Wednesday.

Ayala said the new laws on the housing voucher programs expand eligibility.

“You would have to be evicted in order to qualify, which is more expensive, right? Because now we’re paying two or three times more than the cost of that rent to house you in temporary shelter,” Ayala explained. “So what we’re saying is, if we open up the eligibility, then you avoid people from continuing to come into the system unnecessarily.”

In a statement, Adams administration spokeswoman Kayla Mamelak said, “With more than 10,000 households with CityFHEPS vouchers already in the city shelter system unable to find housing and a rental vacancy rate of just 1.4%, a historic low in the last 60 years, the Council’s bill will only make it harder for New Yorkers in shelter to move into permanent housing.”

City Hall’s chief counsel on Tuesday said legally, the Council overstepped its authority.

“It’s our belief that as a legal matter, that law goes beyond the City Council’s authority and that it’s actually preempted by existing state law, so there are significant legal issues and they will play out in court,” said Lisa Zornberg, chief counsel for Adams administration.

Adams administration officials have argued that the Council’s expansion of CityFHEPS would bust its budget, with minimal savings — estimating a net cost of $17 billion over five years.