Politics
As the Mayor Is Indicted, the Council Passes Rat Birth Control
During a momentous week, the business of government went on at the City Council, which approved bills on jaywalking and rats.
Good morning. It’s Monday. Today we’ll catch up on what the City Council did amid the firestorm surrounding Mayor Eric Adams’s indictment last week.
Credit…Dave Sanders for The New York Times
After the 57-page indictment against Mayor Eric Adams was unsealed last week, phrases like “unprecedented territory” and “uncharted waters” were heard often, because no mayor in the modern history of New York City had faced criminal charges while in office.
That is not to say that Adams’s predecessors were scandal-free. Mayor James Walker became the flamboyant subject of the biopic “Beau James,” with Bob Hope as “a frank playboy who somehow managed some clean figure-skating around notorious civic corruption,” The New York Times said in its review. Walker resigned and fled to Europe with his girlfriend in 1932. And, in 1950, Mayor William O’Dwyer resigned to become the United States ambassador to Mexico, as a police corruption scandal raged.
Amid the will-he-or-won’t-he questions about whether Adams would resign or be replaced by Gov. Kathy Hochul, the mayor insisted that he was innocent of the charges, gibing at what he called a “story,” just as he had referred to the federal investigation leading up to the indictment as a “review.”
Still, at the City Council, “business as usual” went on, Councilman Shaun Abreu said, discussing what he did on Thursday, the day the charges against Adams were unsealed. Abreu said that the “feeling at City Hall was somber and shocked” but that the Council had remained “focused on doing the work.”
