The Adams administration says it conceptually supports a controversial bill weighing whether black New Yorkers deserve reparations for slavery, roiling critics who ripped the measure as one of the most “divisive” to ever emerge from the City Council.
Sideya Sherman, commissioner of the Mayor’s Office of Equity, told a City Council hearing on Sept. 19 that a bill by Councilwoman Farah Louis (D-Brooklyn) to create a task force to study the effects of slavery and racial discrimination on the city — and potentially award payments — should be reworked to address “overlap” with both a comparable state bill awaiting Gov. Kathy Hochul’s signature and another by Councilwoman Crystal Hudson (D-Brooklyn).
Hudson’s legislation would mandate the city’s Commission of Racial Equity create a “Truth, Healing, and Reconciliation” process to establish “historical facts” about the city’s past use of slavery and then recommend changes for local government and institutions to “prevent recurrence.”
Sherman said any reparations task force should spend more time before issuing findings than the one-year maximum outlined in Louis’ bill — considering it took a first-of-its-kind reparations task force in California two years to deliver a proposal on how to compensate black residents.
It’s unclear how much a reparations plan would cost New York, but some economists estimate California’s plan could cost that state more than $800 billion to pay black residents — more than 2.5 times its annual budget.
“This would instantly be the most divisive thing City Hall has ever implemented and, I guarantee, there will be many New Yorkers like me who simply refuse to pay a dime in taxes in retribution for a crime that hasn’t been committed in this state” since it abolished slavery in 1827, fumed Council Minority Leader Joseph Borelli (R-Staten Island).
Councilwoman Joann Ariola, a Queens Republican, said the entire legislative package is yet another example of the radical left pushing its “own versions of revisionist history — promoting some groups while cancelling others.”
“During a time when we as Americans and New Yorkers really should be coming together to move forward, legislation like this – which pits one group against another – only serves to further the racial divides that we are seeing across the country,” Ariola said.
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New York sent more men to fight against slavery during the Civil War than any other state — 465,000-plus – and lost more than 50,000 soldiers in the process.
Louis did not return messages.
The measure and Hudson’s were part of an eight-bill package of controversial City Council legislation introduced in June seeking to remedy so-called “racial injustices.”
Sherman said some of the bills need to address technical glitches, government overlaps, and overzealous timelines that could drive up costs.
But Mayor Adams and her office still “support the spirit and intent of these bills” – including another aimed at removing monuments and other artwork honoring controversial historical public figures from public property, she added.
Sherman also said the administration supports the “intent” of a bill requiring the city’s Public Design Commission to release a “plan” to remove monuments and other art on city land it believes pays tribute to ex-slave owners or people who profited from slavery as well as anyone who committed “systemic” crimes against indigenous peoples or “against humanity.”
Critics fear the legislation will lead to unwarranted history-scrubbing and the yanking of artworks dedicated to George Washington, Peter Stuyvesant, and Christopher Columbus.
