In State of the City, Adams vows to expand job training, reduce emissions from for-hire cars, and more

Mayor Eric Adams on Thursday laid out a vision for New York City’s recovery that builds on his first year, with a broad laundry list of policies that seemed designed to please a wide swath of New Yorkers: growing jobs through a new apprenticeship program, building more housing in Midtown, assisting minority and women-owned businesses, expanding composting, and building on his core issue of public safety.

Whether he can deliver, and more importantly, fund all those initiatives is uncertain. Adams is coming into a year when the city’s economic recovery appears to be slowing and as municipal unions are calling for what will likely be expensive raises. His recent$103 billion budget did not include many ambitious investments and he is seeking to further shrink the size of the city’s workforce amid a staffing crisis.

Adams delivered his speech from inside the Queens Theatre, a historic venue that dates back to the 1964 World’s Fair, describing his plan as a “working people’s agenda” built on jobs, public safety, housing and care.

The mayor, who grew up the son of a single mother in Queens, began his speech with an ode to working-class New Yorkers.

“Your early mornings, late nights, and double shifts keep us moving, keep us healthy, keep us safe — especially over the last few years,” Adams said in prepared remarks. “You have done everything for us, and this city must do more for you,” he said.

As the city’s second Black mayor, Adams has taken pains to highlight his efforts on equity and helping the city’s poorest residents. On Thursday, he said job development would be a top priority in the coming year, with a focus on addressing the high rate of Black unemployment.

Among the proposals, Adams plans to launch an expanded apprenticeship program connecting 30,000 New Yorkers to job training opportunities by 2030, along with investments in new technology job centers and a new program to address a chronic shortage of nurses.

Adams also said his administration was committed to supporting the growth of the legal cannabis industry across the city while cracking down on bad actors who would seek to operate illegally.

“Let me be clear to those who think you’re going to come into our communities without a license, put our kids at risk, man, you must be smoking something,” Adams said.

Leaders of the city's business community welcomed Adams’ emphasis on economic development.

“The mayor seeks to leverage business resources to expand the tax base and generate revenues needed to invest in improving city services, building more affordable housing, caring for the mentally ill, and preparing New Yorkers for careers,” said Kathy Wylde, head of the business-focused Partnership for New York City. “Leaders of the city's business community are enthusiastic about partnering with Mayor Adams to achieve these objectives.”

On the issue of public safety, Adams pledged to tackle recidivists, or repeat offenders, by committing additional funding to the city’s court system.

Adams has argued that crime levels are moving in the right direction, despite an overall rise. Homicides and shootings have dropped, but other major crimes like robbery, assault, and burglary have increased.

He also indicated again that seeking changes to the criminal justice system and bail laws would be another priority for him in Albany. During his speech, he said he would ask Gov. Kathy Hochul — who was among the elected officials in attendance — to provide more resources to the city’s five district attorneys’ offices as well as public defenders.

The governor’s presence at the event was a sharp departure from prior years, when Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio engaged in a sometimes bitter rivalry. It was also an illustration of a political alliance that both Adams and Hochul are counting on for the success of their terms.

“I’m grateful to have you here today,” Adams said to the governor during his speech, in which he praised her for fighting for the city in Albany.

In a statement, Hochul reaffirmed her partnership with the mayor, calling Adams’ address “inspiring and ambitious.”

“I am confident that Mayor Adams' proposals will meet the urgency of this historic moment,” she said in a statement. "Since day one, I vowed to usher in a new era of collaboration and leadership with the mayor, and I look forward to our continued partnership to create a brighter, safer and more prosperous future for New York City."

In a decision that is likely to buoy environmentalists, the mayor also said he would expand composting citywide over the next 20 months. To the confusion of some, the city’s sanitation department recently paused a pilot initiative to bring composting throughout Queens.

Adams also advocated legislation to increase penalties for reckless driving in New York City, including a proposal to make it easier to revoke the driver’s licenses of those who repeatedly run red lights. The proposal — which Adams dubbed “Removing Offenders and Aggressive Drivers from our Streets,” or the ROADS Act — would need to be passed by lawmakers in Albany.

The mayor also announced a plan to require for-hire vehicles from Uber and Lyft to convert to electric vehicles by 2030, a plan that Adams said would come at no cost to the drivers. A spokesperson for Uber signaled support for the plan, without additional details about how it would be achieved.

As the city continues to face an influx of people seeking asylum in the U.S., the mayor stressed that his administration has taken in and provided shelter and other services to more than 42,000 people. But the mayor reiterated that this is a national concern that needs a solution out of Washington with support from Albany.

At the same time, Adams said he planned to bring renewed focus on care for the neediest New Yorkers. He said the city planned to work with state and federal partners to provide free health care to people who have spent more than a week in city homeless shelters.

Outside of the venue, a large group of protesters, including formerly incarcerated people and their families, called on Adams to move ahead with the closure of the troubled Rikers Island jail complex. Conditions at the city’s detention facilities have continued to deteriorate under the Adams administration, with 19 people dying while in city custody last year, the highest number in 25 years.

The protesters want the Adams administration to make budget commitments to shut down the facility, a plan that began under the de Blasio administration.

Like many State of the City addresses, the event had plenty of local flair. In this case, students from Susan E. Wagner High School performed a range of culturally diverse dances.

A six-minute video showed to the audience profiled individual New Yorkers who said they had benefited from the mayor’s first year policies.

The video was initially released earlier in the morning through the launch of a new newsletter intended to give the mayor a platform to promote his initiatives directly to the public.

Adams has criticized his press coverage, saying that his policy announcements have been “distorted” and underappreciated.