NYC NOW - Morning Headlines: NJ Transit Strike Looms, NYC Rent Hikes Proposed, AmeriCorps Loses NY Funding, and New Details on Mayor Adams’ Campaign Finance Challenges

Episode Date: May 1, 2025

New Jersey Transit engineers may go on strike May 16th if no contract deal is reached. In New York City, the Rent Guidelines Board is weighing rent increases for more than a million stabilized apartments, with a final vote expected in June. Meanwhile, the New York Attorney General says federal cuts have wiped out AmeriCorps funding across the state. Plus, this week’s politics segment dives into Mayor Adams’ campaign finance issues, updates in the mayoral race, and the latest from state budget negotiations.

Welcome to NYC now. Your source for local news in and around New York City from WNYC. It's Thursday, May 1st. Here's the morning headlines from Michael Hill. A brewing strike could shut down New Jersey Transit train service May 16th if the agency does not reach an agreement with his locomotive engineers by then. New Jersey Transit President Chris Killory says riders can use Amtrak, path, buses, and ferries, if the railroad shuts down, but he's also urging Garden State commuters to work from home if rail engineers walk off the job.

This is not what any one of us wants to do, but what we are not going to do is cower under the table and not have a plan for our customers. That is my singular priority. NJ Transit and the union representing the engineers have been in a deadlock over-proposed salary increase for months. The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen says they've asked for a 3% salary increase. The union has about 450 working members. New York City's 1 million rent-stabilized department tenants could be facing a rent increase come October. The city's rent guidelines board voted last night on a range of potential increases ahead of its final vote next month. The board is considering an increase at 1.75% to 4.25% on new.

one-year leases and four-and-three-quarter percent to seven-and-three-quarter percent on two-year leases. It uses the range as a framework for future analysis and public debate. The Board will hold the public hearing on the proposal in three weeks. That's on May 22nd right here in Manhattan. The New York State Attorney General says federal cuts are gutting funding for AmeriCorps in the Empire State. AmeriCorps supports efforts such as after-school programs, health support in food banks. People describe it as a domestic peace corps. But last week, programs throughout the New York State learned they were losing all their funding and losing it right away. Michelle Nugabara is executive director of the Cypress Hills Local Development Corporation in Brooklyn,

and she says they'll have to cut peer-led literacy programs. We've had AmeriCorps members who have used their educational stipends, finish their degrees, and now are running our after-school programs. It's just, it's devastating for us. Attorney General in New York and New Jersey and 23 other states are suing to block those cuts. 54 and mostly sunny. Mostly sunny today and 68 for high.

Then tomorrow morning rush shower, patchy fog, and then we warm up to 81 degrees. Stay close. There's more after the break. I'm Sean Quartz. Carlson for WNYC. It is time for politics brief, our weekly segment where we break down the news out of City Hall and Albany. We're joined by WNYC's John Campbell at the Capitol in Albany and Bridget Bergen right here in Manhattan. All right, Bridget, let's start with some of the news that you're covering.

You got a lot of information about Mayor Adams' campaign finances, which I know have been pretty fraught. What are we learning today? Yeah, I got hundreds of pages of documents from a Freedom of Information Law request from the New York City Campaign Finance Board. And what we're learning about are more of the challenges that, you know, his campaign account has faced. Issues with sloppy recordkeeping that could lead to fines. His campaign may have to pay a repayment of matching funds from last cycle. He hasn't gotten any in this cycle. Wow.

You know, he had about $10 million in the last cycle for 2021. One of the newest things I learned today was that when the mayor, shortly after the mayor was indicted, the bank that was holding his account, TD Bank, said that they were going to shut it down right after he was indicted. And, you know, neither his attorney nor a spokesperson for the bank would elaborate as to why. But I did speak with John Caney from Reinvent Albany, a good government expert who said it was likely a risk mitigation step that once, you know, they'd probably been subpoenaed multiple times as part of the investigation. Once it hit that threshold of an indictment, they decided we're done with this. So that was one of the things we learned. another thing that we learned was there had been reporting about a missing $3 million from his campaign

account and that was actually related to this bank account shutting down and when the campaign opened up a new account so there was never missing $3 million but it did get recorded in sort of a strange way and the campaign itself in their response to the campaign finance board really called out the campaign finance board for the way they recorded this for their accounting saying at best it was and at worst, it was prejudicial against the campaign committee. But ironically, in the campaign's response to the campaign finance board, which was detailed with hundreds of pages, there were about 45 pages of records from another candidate's campaign account. No, get out of town.

Yeah, the Adams campaign accidentally submitted 45 pages from Jennifer Rashgarh's campaign filing as part of its explanation for issues with its own campaign. account. They both have the same law firm doing their campaign compliance. Wow. Wow. All right. Speaking of the mayor's race, it stretched all the way up to Albany. John, what can you tell us about that? Yeah, well, I mean, that's what happens when you have three state lawmakers running for New York City Mayor. I mean, there's assembly members of Ron Mamdani and then state senators Jessica Ramos and Zellmer Miree. They're all vying for that Democratic nomination. And that's a lot of travel back and forth between Albany, in New York City, especially during state budget negotiations, which are happening as we speak.

So when Gustavo Rivera, the state senator from the Bronx, wanted to endorse Mom Dani for mayor, they did it outside the state capital this morning. And Rivera said that was kind of appropriate because former governor Andrew Cuomo spent a decade in office at the Capitol. And Rivera really, really does not want him to be mayor. I want to make sure that that person doesn't get to revive. his political career by coming into the mayorship of New York City. Now, we should say Rivera and Cuomo's team do not get along at all. Yeah.

He said he'll rank, Rivera said, I should say, he'll rank Brad Lander number two. And he hasn't decided who to rank three through five in that ranked choice voting system, but it won't be Cuomo. So it sounds like Rivera is part of the dream coalition. And that, of course, is the group of people challenging. former Governor Cuomo, and the dream acronym, of course, stands for now that they've revised. I was going to say, it's had multiple iterations. Yeah, the current iteration is don't rank evil Andrew Cuomo for mayor.

That is their language. That's not our language, but there you go. Duly noted. Okay. You know, John, you mentioned the budget, so let's talk about that a little bit, because a lot's going on on that front. This is all coming, as Governor Hokel says, she has a tentative deal with state lawmakers on a 254-bill. billion dollar state budget. But there still seems to be some last minute judging here, some finagling. What is the deal with that? Yeah, that's a good way to put it, Sean. I mean,

the governor did announce what she called a, quote, general agreement earlier this week, and that basically meant they struck a deal on her big policy priorities. That's things like a statewide ban on smartphone use during the school day and $2 billion worth of checks that'll go out to middle class New Yorkers, both of which are things the governor, by the way, is hoping will help her in her re-election bid next year. But some of the actual bill language for the budget, all of the actual bill language for the budget hasn't been published yet. So there's a lot of these last-minute negotiations going on, particularly on the topic of the state prison system. You'll remember there was a wildcat strike by corrections officers that really threw the system into chaos.

And the state ended up firing a couple thousand corrections officers when there was already a shortage. So now the governor and lawmakers continue to debate ways to bring the prison population down to deal with that, perhaps by letting more people out early for merit. And one other issue under discussion that really just seems to have come up in the last day or two. That's whether or not Governor Hockel should get some unilateral authority to cut the budget if there's, say, a recession or if the Trump administration and Congress hand out federal cuts. That's something they're still debating. as we speak, but lawmakers are expecting to put a budget to a vote next week. Okay, well, we'll be on the lookout for that.

Moving back to the city, Mayor Adams is supposed to announce his budget soon. Bridget, what are you looking out for in that? I think that the event is likely going to feel a bit like a campaign event as much as any budget announcement ever has. It's not going to be at City Hall. It's going to be at his alma mater, Bayside High School. also where city council speaker Adrian Adams attended and, you know, worth noting, Brian Lair, but not a candidate for mayor. You know, I think we're going to see a little bit more of this trend that we've seen emerging from City Hall where Mayor Adams, you know, sees things that are resonating with voters and, you know, good ideas from some of his opponents and implements them now because he can because he is actually the mayor.

So we saw a little bit of that yesterday. He announced an investment in after-school programs. That is something that has been really the signature campaign proposal of state senator Zellmer Mirey of Brooklyn. He wants to have a universal after-school program. This program that the mayor announced yesterday was a much smaller version of that, but they are calling it after-school for all. Today, he announced expanding the number of city police officers. They think they're going to be able to reach that 35,000 number by the fall of 2026, several of the candidates in this race have been talking about increasing the size of the force, increasing investment in the force. Public safety has been a big issue. So I think we're likely to see some more elements of that. And similar to Hockel, you know, he has this opportunity to both campaign and govern at the same time. And so I think it'll be interesting to see how effective that is come November. Interesting. Well, we will be on the lookout for all of that. Now is time for our question for listeners. Do support banning smartphones during the school day. You can let us know by subscribing. That's Politics Brief.

If you want to answer our question or keep hearing more from our politics team, be sure to sign up for emails at gotthmus.com slash newsletters. John Bridget, thanks so much. Thank you. Thanks for listening. This is NYC now from WMYC. Catch us every weekday three times a day for your top news headlines and occasional deep dives. And subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. More soon.