Why I Voted Against the City’s 2021 Fiscal Budget

Last night, on June 30, I voted against the negotiated budget between the Mayor and the City Council, because it did not meet the people’s demand for a budget that defunds the NYPD so we can refund our communities and recover fully from the devastation of COVID-19.

The demand to defund the NYPD was never about a number. It is about questioning an approach to public safety that condones killer cops, racist policing, and mass incarceration, no matter who wears the blue uniform. It is about using the money from this failed and unaccountable department to protect our most vulnerable neighbors.

Budgets are moral documents that show us who we are and what we stand for. I am walking with the people marching in the streets, the advocates working for decades to reform the police, close jails, and most importantly, our New York City youth, who have risen to this occasion, and flooded our public hearing demanding budget justice.

As the Speaker said, we did our best, but sometimes, our best is not good enough for the people of this city. This budget not only fails to defund the NYPD, but fails to use our power in the City Council to check the Mayor and pass a people’s budget over the Mayor’s intransigence.

I also want to share some reflections on how my colleagues have responded to protesters, activists, and New Yorkers camping outside City Hall and marching in the streets.

The NYPD touts their many hours of training to deescalate situations. But so must we as public servants, yet that is not the example we are setting the past few days.

The reason why our constituents are desperately trying to call our cell phones and knock on our doors — as alarming and wrong as that may be in some cases — is because we have failed to create real spaces for real dialogue on the people’s demands.

We held one hearing where the public was invited to speak on the budget in May. One virtual hearing in the middle of a pandemic, when people were focused on surviving. A ten-hour marathon session that most of us did not even attend. And then a subset group of the larger Council negotiated this budget behind closed doors even when the people asked us to include them.

No wonder people are protesting. We are failing to create spaces for an honest conversation with our constituents, about the things they want to talk about:

• Do cops actually make our communities safer?
• Do we think protecting the jobs of cops is more important than protecting the jobs of teachers and social workers?
• Do we think we get to define our communities, or do our communities get to define us?
• Why are budgets negotiated behind closed doors, rather than openly every step of the way?

If we believe in deescalation for the NYPD, we need to practice it ourselves, and have that dialogue.

My colleagues who voted for this budget must be prepared to talk about why they did so, all the time, and everywhere.

Otherwise, we will be going down a path that leads away from deescalation, not towards it. We will be failing to be the people’s representatives.

In the end, I am hopeful. Because in the streets are the next Members of the New York City Council and Mayor who will lead us to a better future.

I am ready to follow them.