Democratic ex-New York Gov. David Paterson blasted the Biden administration Sunday for having “really done nothing’’ to control the border crisis and said the Big Apple should be taking care of its own first.
“The federal government has really done nothing about it,” Paterson told host John Catsimatidis on “Cat’s Roundtable” on WABC 770AM radio, referring to the migrant debacle choking the city and country.
“As a matter of fact, the state, with Gov. Kathy Hochul, has given seven times more money to this effort,” Paterson said.
“They didn’t start it, but they put the money in to help,” he said of local officials.
The former gov noted that the city’s shelter system has already been grappling with space constraints because of the Big Apple’s homeless population.
“And now we are just piling [migrants] on top of them,” he said. “If we’re going to pick between people who are in a devastating state … it would seem that we would first try to assist the ones who live in our city … as opposed to the migrants.”
The former governor also scoffed at the Democratic White House for dispatching a Biden aide to the Big Apple last week to discuss the crisis with Mayor Eric Adams.
“My question is, what’s he gonna tell [Adams]? They can’t just stop by and say, ‘Gee, we feel bad that this is happening but we can’t do anything about it,’ because that’s the answer [Adam’s] been getting already,” Paterson told Catsimatidis.
“And the [federal] government, I don’t see how a meeting with Eric Adams is going to solve this problem,” he said. “Action is going to solve this problem.
“As Mayor Eric Adams said, ‘the dam has burst,’ ” Paterson added.
Adams said last week that the influx of migrants from the southern US border is expected to cost the city nearly $12 billion over the next three years — or about $3.6 billion a year.
City Hall has opened up 198 emergency shelters in the five boroughs to handle the unprecedented flow of migrants, with officials saying they’ve processed 100,000 and are currently housing nearly 60,000.
Despite repeated pleas from Hochul and Adams, the White House has done little to help.
On Sunday, a red-faced Hochul had to backtrack on an expected announcement to house more than 1,000 migrants at Floyd Bennett Field, a former military airfield in Brooklyn now run by the US Parks Service.
The state expected to get the go-ahead for the plan during a conference call with White House officials Sunday, but the feds said they still have to consider the move, a state source said.
New York state is already footing the bill for four emergency migrant sites, including a 2,000-bed facility erected on Randall’s Island — but at a heavy price.
Another state source said the Randall’s Island site will cost state taxpayers $20 million a month.
Paterson criticized the planned encampment.
“I don’t understand that, because Randall’s Island is over-occupied,” he said. “There is a lot of soccer games, activities, and schools playing each other.
-Additional reporting by Carl Campanile