Adams offers peaceful tone at Somos

New York City Mayor Eric Adams made it down to Puerto Rico for the Somos conference Friday evening, days after top administration officials like First Deputy Mayor Lorraine Grillo and Chief Advisor Ingrid Lewis-Martin and agency heads like Transportation Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez and Correction Commissioner Louis Molina had flown south. The mayor had spent the past couple of press conferences and TV appearances doubling down on the importance of rolling back bail laws – after shifting away from the issue in the final days of Gov. Kathy Hochul’s reelection campaign. In brief remarks to a packed ballroom at the Royal Sonesta hotel, Adams struck a peaceful tone, talking about legislative wins like funding for child care and the Public Housing Preservation Trust. “Listen, we all know Albany. We don’t agree on everything,” he said. “But we must agree on the important things, to represent the people of the state of New York.” Hochul, state Sen. Andrea Stewart-Cousins, Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie and U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand all spoke too, at the Legislative Leadership Reception. 

With Adams pushing, some legislators seem to have resigned themselves that bail reform will be on the legislative agenda in 2023 once again. “I think we’re going to continue to have conversations. We’ve revisited this issue a number of times, in every single session year. I suspect that we’re going to continue to have this larger public safety conversation,” state Sen. Zellnor Myrie, a supporter of the original bail reforms, told City & State. “But I’m reluctant to make this about bail reform, because it is not. It is about making people feel safe.”