Mayor Adams Announces Budget Adds — and New Head of NYPD

 

Mayor Adams Announces Budget Adds — and New Head of NYPD

At what was expected to be a fairly routine briefing on tweaks to city spending, the mayor announced Jessica Tisch would be getting her third commissionership.

This article originally appeared in The City.

By Katie Honan

NEW YORK - Mayor Eric Adams on Wednesday unveiled a modified budget that includes funding for 1,600 new police officers and money for rental vouchers — and then introduced a new police commissioner, Jessica Tisch, in a surprise announcement.

The November changes — an annual occurrence — are the latest  update to the city’s fiscal year 2025 budget passed in late June, now adding $3 billion to the original $112 billion. 

The increased spending comes from adding 1,600 new police officers, bringing the total number of NYPD officers to almost 34,000, Adams revealed on Thursday. It also adds $467 million into a cash-assistance program that helps low-income New Yorkers pay for groceries and other bills and $115 million into the city’s rental-assistance program. 

Adams said the new funds were made possible by increased tax revenue and savings from “lower-than-expected” numbers of migrants entering the city since July. 

“We have been clear we are shifting from an emergency to put procedures in place that could be cost-saving to taxpayers,” the mayor said. 

Jacques Jiha, the city’s budget director, said after the briefing that the city’s previous conservative tax assessment — and necessary cuts — helped with the budget. 

“We’re making long term spending decisions,” he said. The amended budget doesn’t include major restorations to other cuts, despite calls from advocates to make crucial restorations to the city’s parks, including funding to hire more people at rec centers and in other positions. The Parks Department’s only boost comes from 9,000 new lockable steel bins.

In Her Blood

Midway through the mayor’s budget briefing, he made a surprise announcement that Tisch, who currently heads the Department of Sanitation, would now take over at the NYPD.

Before DSNY, Tisch was the commissioner of the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (now known as the Office of Technology & Innovation). Previously she was originally at the NYPD as its deputy commissioner for information technology. 

Interim Police Commissioner Tom Donlon — who was put in the role following the resignation of Edward Caban, weeks after the former commissioner's home was raided as part of a law enforcement investigation — will now work under the deputy mayor for public safety, the mayor also announced. 

Donlon meanwhile could not continue as police commissioner because he had his own home raided by the FBI in late September — just days after Adams put him in the top cop job.

Tisch, whose father and uncles run the Loews Corporation, will be the fourth police commissioner since Adams took office in 2022, and the city’s second female commissioner after Keechant Sewell — who resigned in June 2023.

That same month, THE CITY reported that Sewell had clashed with Adams over her decision to discipline Chief Jeffrey Maddrey for abuse of authority, which was recommended by the Civilian Complaint Review Board. 

She was then replaced by Caban, who resigned in September a week after his home was searched as part of a federal investigation that targeted at least a half-dozen other members of the NYPD. 

During Caban’s 426-day tenure, NYPD car chases spiked, with sometimes fatal results, THE CITY reported. At the same time, discipline for police officers convicted by the CCRB went down, with Caban often rejecting plea deals and throwing out punishments. 

Tisch did not take questions after her announcement and will be sworn in on Monday, the mayor said.

DSNY First Deputy Commissioner Javier Lojan, a 25-year Sanitation veteran, will be acting interim commissioner, an agency spokesperson told THE CITY. The department has gained more power after a controversial ballot proposition passed on Election Day.

Tisch said she is “looking forward to coming home” to the NYPD.

“In my dozen years at the [police] department I had the opportunity to work with some of the most extraordinary public servants. People who run toward the danger when everyone else runs away,” she said.

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