Gothamist – New York City Mayor Eric Adams said on Wednesday that he was canceling an expected third round of agency spending cuts and allowing agencies to restart some hiring — a move he said was possible due to higher-than-anticipated tax revenues and additional cuts to migrant-related spending.

But he warned the city was “not yet out of the woods” and still needs state and federal assistance to address the migrant influx that began in spring 2022.

“Despite facing a perfect fiscal storm that included a multibillion-dollar budget gap driven by an asylum-seeker crisis, the sunsetting of COVID-19 federal stimulus funding, and the cost of inherited outstanding labor costs, our administration was able to successfully make the strong fiscal decisions to navigate us to prosperity,” Adams said in a statement.

The now-canceled third round of cuts were targeted at 5% of agency spending, in hopes of saving as much as $4.1 billion, according to City Hall officials. Most of the previous two rounds of 5% cuts that were announced in November and January remain, although Adams had recently walked some of those back, too.

The administration said the additional 10% in migrant spending cuts would save $586 million over the next two years. Those savings, which come on top of a 20% cut ordered last year, will be realized by reworking previous emergency contracts and transitioning from using private companies to using nonprofit providers to care for migrants.

“We’re relieved that there’s not going to be another round of cuts to [the city Department of Education], but we are deeply concerned about the cuts already proposed,” said Randi Levine, policy director at the nonprofit organization Advocates for Children of New York.