Adams agrees to nix library cuts after pols threaten to blow NYC budget deadline

Mayor Adams has agreed to back off a controversial push to cut funding for the city’s public library systems — a reversal that came after City Council negotiators threatened to blow this year’s budget deadline unless the mayor relented — according to multiple sources familiar with the matter.

Under the tentative agreement reached Wednesday, next fiscal year’s budget — which is due by midnight Friday — won’t include a $36.2 million funding reduction for the three public library systems that the mayor has advocated since the spring, said the sources, who are involved in the spending talks.

Library spending has been one of the most contentious components of this year’s budget negotiations between the Council and the mayor’s office. The heads of the Brooklyn, Queens and New York public library systems have warned that the cut — which involves relatively little money in the context of a municipal budget that is sure to exceed $100 billion — would force many of their branches to shut down on weekends and restrict other services that mostly cater to low-income New Yorkers.

The mayor’s team has been consistently noncommittal on reversing the library budget trims. However, two of the sources, who like the others spoke on condition of anonymity, told the Daily News that the mayoral negotiators had a change of heart after the Council’s team said they were prepared to “walk away” from the talks and let this year’s budget run late if the library shaves weren’t undone.

An Adams spokesman declined to confirm or deny whether the threat prompted the cut reversal.

The spokesman, Jonah Allon, did say the mayor’s team is “always looking for ways to ensure these vital institutions can continue fulfilling their mission and we have been working with City Council to evaluate if adjustments can be made through the budget process.”

The expected reversal of the library cuts was first reported by Politico.

If this year’s budget is late, the past fiscal year’s spending levels would automatically kick in until a new agreement is reached.

The new deal on library spending indicates that an agreement on the full budget for next fiscal year could be close. A Council source said a handshake deal on the full framework could happen as early as Thursday morning.

A handshake agreement would cap off a budget season that’s grown so heated that there’s been murmurs around City Hall that a deal would perhaps not be reached by the July 1 deadline.

The budget feuding is in part the result of Adams digging in his heels on a push for slashing spending across nearly all city agencies. Adams’ executive budget proposal, combined with his cost-saving Programs to Eliminate the Gap, would strip hundreds of millions of dollars in funding for agencies like CUNY and the Department of Social Services, in addition to the libraries.

The mayor maintains the austerity’s necessary to hedge against ballooning costs the city’s incurring from housing and providing services for the tens of thousands of mostly Latin-American migrants who have arrived since last spring. He has also attributed the need for belt-tightening to a cooling national economy and macro-economic trends like inflation.

The Council has strongly pushed back against the mayor’s proposed cuts, arguing that the city’s able to both care for migrants and maintain current spending levels at agencies. In some instances, the Council has called for increasing agency spending, saying that the city’s higher-than-expected tax revenues can cover the cost.