‘No, you leave!’ Eric Adams vows NYC will stick with 2% paying half of all taxes
The lovefest between Albany and City Hall was on full display at a Wall Street power breakfast Wednesday, as the mayor and governor looked to make a clear break from their predecessors in a show of solidarity — not only between themselves but also with New York’s struggling business community.
Gov. Kathy Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams announced a pro-business shared vision for a “new” post-COVID-19 New York City at the Association For a Better New York’s event at Cipriani’s Financial District location.
Adams, 62, took the opportunity to forcefully stand behind the business community and let wealthy New Yorkers know he was on their side — a departure from his predecessor, Bill de Blasio, who famously took high earners for granted, and whose spokesman told billionaires to “kick rocks” during the early days of the pandemic.
“To continually attack high-income earners where 50% of our taxes are paid by 2% of New York … It blows my mind when I hear people say ‘Leave,'” the mayor said.
“No, you leave! I need my high-income earners right here in this city,” Adams emphasized, to applause.
Meanwhile, Hochul, in a preview of her upcoming State of the State address, said the current era was a “great opportunity” to make sure the beating heart of the city “never goes on life support,” as she talked about reimagining the still largely vacant Midtown business district to make it more attractive to remote workers.
“I don’t want to head into 2023 to 2030 and say, ‘Boy, I wish we had done something sooner,'” said Hochul, 64.
“Take the same building that is 40% full, I’m looking at, can people live there? Can there be a childcare center there? Can there be a nice restaurant? Can we have co-working space? Can we just do something creative? Have a tech hub, you know, bring in dorm housing for students.”
The governor also alluded to tax breaks for businesses and landlords in front of the biz-friendly audience of honchos, lobbyists and public relations operatives.
“There’s a million things we can do, but I guarantee there’s a barrier or law or regulation that says, ‘No you can’t.’ And there’d have to be financial incentives because the conversion of office space, commercial space, into residential. Putting in all the bathrooms and the showers: It’s expensive.”
New York City was shelving vacant positions to cope with a $2.9 billion budget deficit and the mayor’s pro-business rhetoric was a departure from past fiscal crises, in which the city looked to raise taxes to shore up its coffers.
Adams compared the current moment to the city’s effort to build the Empire State Building in a year during the Great Depression, or lead the country’s recovery after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.
“We are America’s city, and the way goes New York goes America,” Adams said.
“We were the epicenter of terrorism and we were the epicenter of COVID, but again we’re going to get up. We’re going to show the country why we are New York, and this new New York conversation is going to show how together we get all cylinders operating on the same engine to regain our economy, regain our city, and we leave no one behind.”
Both Democrats took many self-congratulatory opportunities to applaud the fact that they had a working relationship, unlike their predecessors, Andrew Cuomo and de Blasio.
Despite promising to announce a “combined recovery agenda,” the politicians spoke in platitudes, not specifics, about ABNY’s 159-page “‘New’ New York” plan, authored by Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s former deputy Dan Doctoroff and Richard Burey Jr., CEO of the Robin Hood Foundation.
The unspecified plan was aimed at boosting office occupancy and subway ridership, which were only at 40% and 62% of pre-pandemic weekday levels, respectively. The loose agenda was reflected in meandering moments on stage.
Hochul said that turning the page on the pandemic would give officials the chance to address “poverty, racism” and “wage gaps,” while mentioning that she spends her weekends on the phone with Texas business owners trying to lure them to the Empire State due to New York’s lack of abortion restrictions.
Adams repeated a frequent refrain of his, chiding the media for covering crime in the subway, which he claimed scares away people from the system, and insisted that the vast majority of commuters are safe.
He also renewed calls for Albany’s bail reform law to be overturned.
“I will be honest with you, if we didn’t have COVID, asylum seekers, crime, economic challenges, if we didn’t have all these things, I wouldn’t want this job. I want it because it’s hard,” he said.
“Winners want the ball when the game is on the line. Give me the ball.”
