Mayor Ben Walsh and councilors Corey Williams and Pat Hogan on Wednesday met for the first time since the Common Council voted to slash about $16 million of Walsh’s proposed budget.
The Council is locked into a dispute with Walsh about how to handle the financial future of the city. Councilors — particularly Hogan, a mayoral candidate — have painted a dire landscape for the city’s financial future. They’ve argued that continuing to raise the tax rate on residents, and pulling even more money from the city’s fund balance, which is projected to sit at about $120 million later this year, is unsustainable.
Walsh said he largely agrees that the city can’t keep pulling money from the fund balance but that the city “can’t cut our way to prosperity.”
Which path the city takes will be determined by councilors and the mayor over the next month. The primary elections for several Council seats and the mayor’s race will serve as the backdrop for those decisions.
Wednesday’s meeting was meant for Walsh and Council leadership — Hogan is the Council’s president pro tempore and Williams is the chair of its Finance, Taxation and Assessment Committee — to talk about the future of the budget.
Walsh praised Williams as “trying to do the right thing,” notably leaving out Hogan, who has butted heads with the mayor of late. But Walsh also said he’s not sure the meeting changed the Council’s approach to the budget.
“It’s not clear whether or not that’ll happen,” Walsh said of a compromise between the Council and the mayoral administration.
The budget is currently in Walsh’s hands. He has until Monday to choose whether to veto any of the Council’s cuts. The Council has threatened to override his vetoes.
Walsh acknowledged Wednesday’s meeting should’ve happened earlier. He reached out to the Council to talk about his proposal before and after he unveiled it, but his requests were rebuffed, Walsh said. Councilor Corey Williams did not directly answer a question from Central Current about whether Walsh reached out to meet about the budget, only saying that claims the Council’s process was “secretive or behind closed doors is simply rhetoric.”
Williams was the only member of the Council’s Finance, Taxation and Assessment Committee who agreed to answer Central Current’s questions about the Council’s budget cuts and the meeting with the mayor. Williams agreed to answer written questions.
When Williams was asked whether the budget had room for compromise, Williams wrote the Council “stands behind its amendments” and “views this moment as an opportunity to bring a conversation around our city’s fiscal health to the forefront.”
Transparency experts and advocates disagree with Williams’ and other councilors’ contentions that the budget process hasn’t been secretive.
In the run-up to the Council’s cuts, the city’s legislative body:
- Chose to not make public a taxpayer-funded report from The Bonadio Group on Walsh’s proposed budget before voting to slash the proposed budget
- Released the agenda detailing its amendments to Walsh’s budget at 11 p.m. the night before voting on the cuts
- Held private caucus meetings about the budget that transparency advocates and experts have characterized as abusing New York’s open meetings laws
In response to a question asking how councilors’ meeting with the mayor went, Williams wrote, “The Council is always willing to listen.”
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