Mayor Adams issues last-minute vetoes of 19 NYC Council bills with big policy implications

Chris Sommerfeldt, New York Daily News on Dec 31, 2025

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Mayor Adams vetoed 19 City Council bills late Wednesday in a last-ditch effort to block the measures, which carry significant implications for city policy on immigration, housing, street vending, police accountability and more.

The vetoes, issued just hours before Adams’ term as mayor was set to end at midnight, can be overridden by the City Council when the body reconvenes for a new term in early January. After the Daily News first reported on the forthcoming vetoes last week, incoming Council Speaker Julie Menin said the chamber “will take a close look” at each of them, and Council insiders have said overrides are likely on a number of the executive actions.

Still, in a statement shortly after 5 p.m. Wednesday, Adams said he was issuing the vetoes because the bills in question would “worsen our affordable housing crisis with new, unfunded mandates and red tape” and “undermine our small businesses with an untested new licensing regime for street vendors,” among other issues he cited.

“My team has worked diligently and in good faith to find common ground with the City Council on our shared priorities, but the Council, once again, proved unwilling to temper its reckless legislation,” the mayor’s statement said.

Firing back at the outgoing mayor, Menin countered the Adams administration has not worked collaboratively with the Council during the past four years.

“The Adams administration has too often sidelined the legislative process. For years, agencies failed to provide basic data, commissioners skipped hearings, and meaningful negotiations were pushed to the last minute,” the incoming speaker said. “The Council will consider next steps on these vetoes to uphold our legislative priorities that focus on a wide range of topics, from justice for survivors of gender-motivated violence to tax lien reform to affordable housing.”

Among the measures the mayor vetoed is a bill that would strengthen the city’s sanctuary laws by prohibiting federal immigration authorities from maintaining offices for any purposes on city Department of Correction property. That issue has become especially fraught since Adams — in the wake of the Trump administration’s April dismissal of his corruption indictment — sought to let ICE agents operate on Rikers Island. Advocates worried that effort would result in the city assisting the feds in civil immigration proceedings in violation of local sanctuary law.

Other bills that the mayor used his veto pen to try to undo include ones that would:

• Grant thousands of new merchandise and food vending licenses every year in an effort to shift away from a system under which unlicensed vendors face criminal repercussions

• Prohibit for-hire vehicle companies like Uber from deactivating drivers without cause

• Secure minimum pay standards for security guards in the city

• Create new ethics rules aimed at rooting out corruption in the city’s municipal contracting processes

• Mandate that landlords provide tenants with cooling systems upon request in the summer months

• Require the NYPD to provide the Civilian Complaint Review Board with access to all of the department’s body-cam footage

• Reform the city government’s tax lien sales process in a way that supporters say would prevent displacement of homeowners and tenants and prioritize delinquent buildings for affordable housing development

Additionally, the mayor vetoed a package of bills that would put local nonprofit groups at the front of the line for certain building sales, deepen affordability requirements in city-financed housing developments and require that more two- and three-bedroom units be included in building projects subsidized by the city.

The prospect of overrides may be more unclear on the housing-related bills, which Adams’ successor, Zohran Mamdani, has voiced skepticism about, too. The concern from Mamdani — as well as from Adams — has been that the deepened affordability and bedroom requirements could slow down housing production, according to sources familiar with their thinking.

Menin already said last week the Council will override Adams’ Christmas Eve veto of yet another bill that would open a lookback window for gender-based violence victims to sue their alleged perpetrators even if the statute of limitations has expired.

The Council will have 30 days to pull off override votes from the day the vetoes are formally received at the body’s next meeting in January.

Adams’ final veto spree marks the coda to a rocky relationship between him and the City Council.

Adams, a moderate Democrat, ever since taking office in January 2022, has had tense relations with the more progressive-leaning Council, with budget negotiations turning outright hostile in several years.

Over his term, Adams also issued various vetoes to try to block Council legislation related to everything from housing subsidies to banning solitary confinement on Riker Island.

In nearly every instance, the Council has overridden Adams, forcing the measures into law over his objection.