Mayoral hopeful and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced on Wednesday that he would seek to keep Rikers Island open as mayor, bucking a 2019 law requiring the jail complex to close and be replaced with four borough-based jails by 2027.
Cuomo, running for mayor as an independent after losing the Democratic primary in June, revealed during a Crain’s New York Business mayoral forum on Wednesday that he wants to replace the crumbling facilities on Rikers with new “state-of-the-art jails.”
The plan to close Rikers was passed by the City Council and enacted by former Mayor Bill de Blasio six years ago, with the express purpose of turning the page on the historically dilapidated and violence-stricken facilities and replacing them with jails that are far safer and more accessible to detainees’ families.
In the years since, the federal government has moved to put Rikers under receivership after action plans from the city failed to address the most pressing safety and civil rights concerns raised by both the island’s federal monitor, Steve Martin, and Judge Laura Taylor Swain, presiding over Nunez vs. City of New York, the federal class action lawsuit against alleged civil rights violations by the Correction Department.
The former governor said the city should abandon its current legally mandated plan to shut down Rikers in less than two years, as it “promises to be New York City’s big ditch.”
“Let’s make a major start by stopping a major divide, which is the new jail construction to replace Rikers Island,” Cuomo said. “It is already years late, billions over budget, and obsolete.”
The former governor has pointed to the community jail plan’s cost ballooning from a projected $8 billion in 2019 to current estimates of $15 billion to $16 billion. Moreover, the construction of both the Brooklyn and Manhattan jails is years behind schedule, and Rikers has over 7,000 detainees as of this March, when the borough-based jails can only hold up to 3,300 people, as reasons for his changed stance.
However, Cuomo’s proposal faces significant hurdles. Chief among those stumbling blocks is that he would need approval from the left-leaning City Council, which has shown little appetite to scrap the 2019 law.
Cuomo added that the new facilities he would build on Rikers should be paired with free bus service to the island from each borough. Furthermore, he suggested that the four borough-based jail sites — one in each borough besides Staten Island — should instead be used for housing and commercial space.
Cuomo touts alleged cost savings
The independent candidate claimed that building new jails on Rikers would save the city billions of dollars in the long run. He said New Yorkers should trust that he can keep the projects on time and under budget, given his past success with major infrastructure projects, such as rebuilding LaGuardia Airport.
While Cuomo had previously said Rikers should shutter, he cited the need for a new closure plan, given that the city will likely not meet the 2027 timeline. A Cuomo spokesperson told amNewYork late last month that he “has sought the closing of Rikers for more than a decade.”
“The current plan has been mismanaged and dragged down by incompetence,” the spokesman said. “There’s no way those jails are going to be completed by 2027, and everyone needs to go back to the drawing board with a real plan that has to be managed.”
City Council reacts: ‘This isn’t a plan’
A spokesperson for outgoing City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams contended in a statement that Cuomo’s plan is nothing more than a political ploy as he seeks to overcome Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani in the Nov. 4 general election.
“This isn’t a plan; it’s a political scam with no basis in facts or reality,” the spokesperson said. “It would cost the city billions of dollars more and make our city less safe for all New Yorkers.”
The council spokesperson referenced findings by the Independent Rikers Commission, as outlined in its March “Blueprint to Close Rikers,” that rebuilding the island jails would cost 8%-15% more than constructing the borough-based sites. The commission’s chair, former New York State Court of Appeals Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman, said “Rikers must be closed as soon as humanly possible” in a Wednesday statement responding to Cuomo’s announcement.
“Rebuilding on Rikers is highly problematic, fiscally flawed, and at variance with the law and the present advanced state of contracting, moneys invested, and preparatory work already undertaken to build four new more humane local jails in the city,” Lippman said.
Mamdani, for his part, has said he would “work to adhere” to the 2027 timeline. During his own news conference on Oct. 8, Mamdani told reporters that Rikers is a “stain on our city.”
“To keep it open, it’s a betrayal, not only of the law as it stands today, but also what New Yorkers actually want,” Mamdani said. “They don’t want someone running to be the mayor of the city that will keep Rikers Island open. They want someone who will actually be able to bring to an end the history of abuse that we’ve seen on that very Island.”
With reporting by Shane O’Brien
