Mayor Eric Adams will provide $14.8 million in funds to provide free homeowner trash bins — a move in line with legislation enacted by the City Council in March — despite a Saturday report in the New York Post that he would refuse to do so on the grounds that the bill passed was “fiscally irresponsible.”
Though Mayor Adams has criticized the legislation, a spokesperson for the Mayor told amNewYork that the office never said it would not provide the funding.
The Mayor’s office claims that the City Council should have taken responsibility for funding legislation it passed last year to provide free trash bins to eligible homeowners in New York City as part of the city’s broader push for trash containerization and its “war on rats.” The legislation passed the Council unanimously and took effect automatically when Mayor Adams did not take action to veto or sign it.
From the City Council’s perspective, it made its funding priorities clear to the Mayor’s team during budget negotiations, and maintains that it is standard procedure for the Mayor to find mandated City Hall funding for enacted laws.
First Deputy Press Secretary for the Mayor Liz Garcia wrote in a statement to amNewYork that the Adams administration would “be investing $14 million toward providing free bins to qualifying New Yorkers in one- and two-unit properties, which will help push our containerization efforts even further and continue to drive down rat populations.”
“While the City Council chose not to fund their own law, the Adams administration will always invest in working-class New Yorkers, and we look forward to continuing to win the war on rats,” Garcia wrote.
A spokesperson for Mayor Adams told amNewYork that the City Council never made it clear to the Mayor that the legislation was not already funded in the adopted fiscal year 2026 city budget, nor that the funding was a priority for the Council or that the funding needed to come from City Hall.
However, the City Council countered that its members had made all these realities clear to Adams’ team during budget negotiations and that the initiative was meant to be covered by the budget’s $32 million permanent addition to Department of Sanitation funding.
“Eric Adams has failed to personally, meaningfully engage in the budget process during his tenure as mayor,” said City Council Member Lincoln Restler (D-Brooklyn). “So the idea that he didn’t know what was a council priority, or the notion that he was unaware of what was a council priority, surprises me not in the slightest.”
The Council had indeed made its desires for the funding public during budget negotiations in May.
The New York Post reported Saturday that Mayor Adams would not “sign off” on the $14.8 million in funding required to meet the new program’s mandate. Though the Council passed the legislation unanimously, ruling out a mayoral veto, the mayor could alert the City Council that a given mandate would go unfunded due to a lack of funds.
Mayor Adams has previously criticized the legislation, enacted in March, for being fiscally irresponsible. Instead of using New York State’s STAR Program as a metric for eligibility for the free bins, Mayor Adams has instead advocated for a program that uses New York City metrics.
“When this law was being considered, our administration was clear with the council that these programs are state-run programs — and we therefore do not have data on enrollment that could help with providing bins,” Garcia wrote in her statement to the New York Post, which Garcia shared with amNewYork. “However, we proposed an alternative city program to determine who could receive free bins, and that was rejected.”
“It is unfortunate that the City Council irresponsibly passed an unfunded law and then did not prioritize funding for it during our recent budget negotiations,” Garcia wrote. “We will continue to work to provide the most affordable options to New Yorkers and send the rats packing out of our city.”
Restler said that, though the Mayor claims he was unaware of the Council’s priority, Mayor Adams “didn’t lift a finger to express an ounce of opposition” during budget negotiations.
“He just complains incoherently in the press about an initiative that’s supposedly a priority of his administration,” Restler said.
Mayor Adams has made the “war on rats” a central mark of his time in office. In June, he announced that West Harlem had become the first neighborhood in New York City to reach 100% trash containerization following a successful pilot program.
The March legislation approved by the Council aims to provide New Yorkers in need of financial assistance with free trash bins so they can comply with new containerization laws.
“As New York City’s legislative branch, the City Council writes the laws,” City Council Member Justin Brannan (D-Brooklyn) wrote in a statement to amNewYork. “As the executive branch, it’s the Mayor’s job to administer and enforce the laws we pass. There’s a veto process if the mayor disagrees with a law we’ve passed. No veto? Then you need to enforce the law. All of the laws we pass are priorities for us or else we wouldn’t pass them. Now it seems City Hall is looking for a pat on the back for doing their job as per the charter. Not interested.”
Council spokesperson Julia Agos wrote in a statement to amNewYork that the “mayor’s office is claiming it doesn’t know the laws of the city they are responsible for running, so they’re either lying or admitting incompetence.”
“Either way, it is a disgrace to all New Yorkers,” Agos wrote. “With affordability as the top issue facing our city’s residents, Mayor Adams’ administration should stop denying support to New Yorkers who need assistance affording the trash containers his administration mandated.”
