RIKERS ISLAND POWER STRUGGLE — Mayor Eric Adams was not pleased when Damian Williams, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District, came out in favor this week of a federal takeover of New York City’s notoriously violent jail complex.
“Something just doesn't add up,” Adams said during an unrelated press briefing Tuesday, noting that a Rikers Island report from a federal monitor in April said the administration was making progress. “I respect [Williams]. I think he's a great leader there. But something is just not adding up that I went from ‘Eric is turning the corner’ to, ‘Now we need to place [Rikers] in receivership.’” A subsequent report from that same monitor, however, painted a damning picture of a lack of transparency and mismanagement by the Department of Correction. (The department disputed many points of the assessment.) And on Tuesday, the judge overseeing the case issued a strong rebuke of the Adams administration, signaling a potential takeover could be in the offing. Adams has ample reason to be wary of such an outcome. Losing control of the jail would undermine a main selling point to voters — that he is running city government competently after years of disarray — as he gears up for reelection. “This mayor inherited a city that was basically out of control,” Adams said at the same press briefing Tuesday, “And we are governing.” It would also transfer powers of the executive branch to the courts in a way the administration — and another before it — have found problematic. The Adams team is currently seeking to weaken the city’s right to shelter, a series of agreements and laws overseen by a judge that have mandated the city provide accommodations to tens of thousands of migrants arriving from the southern border. Officials have argued that the judicial branch’s oversight has left them with too rigid a framework, and that they need more wiggle room to provide services without tanking the whole system. While the legal framework surrounding Rikers is different, a receiver would have enormous power to act unilaterally, potentially upending contract arrangements with a union representing correction workers while drawing continued attention to the troubled facility in the process. To many observers, however, that is exactly the step needed to finally stem the violence and death that have long plagued the facility. “The lack of transparency and improvement in City jails proves that DOC cannot continue safe and secure operation of these facilities,” City Comptroller Brad Lander said in a statement accompanying a release of new statistics about the island. IT’S WEDNESDAY. WHERE’S KATHY? In Albany and New York City with no immediate public schedule. WHERE’S ERIC? Visiting Summer Rising site children's aid in Manhattan, delivering remarks to kick off voting for Riders’ Choice Awards in Times Square, delivering an asylum seeker-related announcement in City Hall, delivering remarks at a flag raising ceremony for Belgium, and speaking at “Rise Up NYC” summer concert series in Brooklyn. QUOTE OF THE DAY: “The state’s fiscal outlook has changed considerably over the past year, and significant economic and fiscal risks could further upend the state’s finances,” State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said in a new report.
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