In the waning days of Mayor Eric Adams’ administration, the New York City Law Department took a victory lap highlighting its work in the last year of Adams’ term — one that saw the mayor himself let off the hook on federal charges in a deal with the Trump administration.
Corporation Counsel Muriel Goode-Trufant released a report highlighting the Law Department’s work in the areas of public safety, public health and education, safeguarding the city from federal overreach and supporting economic development.
“I am proud of what the Law Department has accomplished this year to protect the interests of the city and to improve the quality of life for New Yorkers,” Goode-Trufant said in a statement announcing the report.
“[T]he dedicated public servants of this office have helped the city confront numerous challenges across various legal areas to help make the city safer, healthier, and more prosperous for all.”
Public health and safety
When President Donald Trump attempted to cut millions in counterterrorism funding for the New York City subway system — a move later thwarted by a federal judge — the city joined New York state in its lawsuit against the Trump administration. The result was a restored $12 million that the MTA will pass on to NYPD.
The city also took on vapes this year, including by suing nine major national distributors for the illegal sale of disposable flavored e-cigarettes and shutting down a Long Island-based vape seller via consent order.
At the Second Circuit, judges upheld the state’s ban on open carry of firearms and prohibition on carrying firearms in sensitive, public areas like Times Square, the subway system and Metro North trains.
On the environmental health front, the city beat a challenge at the New York Court of Appeals to a law addressing greenhouse gas emissions from large buildings. It also saw support for efforts to divest pension funds from fossil fuels, winning at the Appellate Division, First Department.
The Law Department also touted its wins at the New York Court of Appeals against a challenge to its efforts to move municipal retirees to Medicare Advantage, which retirees claimed offer inferior coverage, and the dismissal of a lawsuit claiming that the Department of Education had failed to address racial segregation.
Fighting the feds
The city joined more than 35 legal proceedings against the federal government in response to executive orders and other policy changes that upended spending priorities, including discontinuing $47 million in grants for NYC public school magnet programs; threatened immigrants’ rights; and endangered homeless and formerly homeless New Yorkers who rely on federal rental assistance.
In some cases the Law Department filed suit directly; in others — when the city’s interests were not directly implicated — it submitted amicus briefs, totaling nearly two dozen.
Among the filings were briefs backing the habeas petitions of students detained by federal immigration officials while in courts, schools and churches.
City lawyers are also playing defense against the federal government’s lawsuit seeking to scrap the city’s sanctuary laws, filing a motion to dismiss the suit, which seeks to force local officials to help enforce aggressive federal immigration policy.
Jobs and bonds
The Law Department closed $28.9 billion in bond deals, it said, among those being the U.N. Development Corporation’s sale of $365 million in city-backed municipal bonds to fund renovations of two U.N. Plaza buildings. That project is set to create 1,800 jobs, according to the department.
After it successfully quashed challenges to another headline-grabbing development — the building of three casinos in Queens and the Bronx — the city says those plans will bring billions in revenue to the city’s economy and provide thousands of jobs.
The department also worked on concession agreements for Wollman Rink and Silvercup Studios, it said, by negotiating labor agreements, drafting procurement rules and streamlining city payments to its nonprofit providers.
