Andrew Cuomo would scrap plan to close Rikers Island if elected NYC mayor: ‘New York City’s Big Ditch’

Independent mayoral candidate Andrew Cuomo said Wednesday he’d scrap the controversial plan to close the Rikers Island jail complex if he’s elected in November – a stunning about-face from the ex-governor.

Cuomo — who as governor championed closing the troubled complex — said during a Crain’s New York business breakfast he wants to abandon the plan to close Rikers by 2027 and replace it with four borough-based jails.

“Let’s make a major start by stopping a major debacle — the new jail construction to replace Rikers Island,” Cuomo told business leaders.

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“The writing is on the wall: it promises to be New York City’s Big Ditch. It is already years late, billions over budget, and obsolete.”

The price tag to build the four jails ballooned from $8 billion to $16 billion in recent years.

The four sites eyed for the replacement jails in Kew Gardens, Queens; the Bronx; Downtown Brooklyn and downtown Manhattan would instead be used to build affordable housing, he said.

“We should rebuild new, state-of-the-art jails on Rikers Island, provide free bus service, and reuse the four cleared, massive existing sites for major housing and commercial developments,” the ex-governor said.

“It would immediately unleash great potential while avoiding more years of delay and government waste.”

The Independent Rikers Commission continues to believe the complex should be closed “as soon as humanely possible.”

“Rebuilding on Rikers is highly problematic, fiscally flawed, and at variance with the law and the present advanced state of contracting, money invested, and preparatory work already undertaken to build four new more humane local jails in the city,” said the commission’s chairman Jonathan Lippman, former chief judge of the state of New York.

Backers of closing Rikers said the about-face was a desperate bid to revive his comeback bid for mayor as he continues to trail Democratic front-runner Zohran Mamdani in the polls.

“This isn’t a plan; it’s a political scam with no basis in facts or reality,” a spokesman for City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams said.

“It would cost the city billions of dollars more and make our city less safe for all New Yorkers.”

The conditions at Rikers — where a dozen detainees have died at Rikers this year — are so dreadful for inmates awaiting trial and corrections officers that a federal judge is putting the system into receivership.

Cuomo’s rival Mamdani said he supports the plan to close Rikers, which is baked into city law.

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“[Rikers] is a stain on our city, and to keep it open, it’s a betrayal, not only of the law as it stands today, but also of what New Yorkers actually want,” Mamdani said.

“They don’t want someone running to be the mayor of the city that will keep Rikers Island open,” he said.

“They want someone who will actually be able to bring to an end the history of abuse that we’ve seen on that very island.”

But Mamdani — who is now serving as a member of the state Assembly — has also changed his position.

Mamdani blasted the council in 2019 — a year prior to his election — for not going far enough with its plan,. which he criticized as “increasing the power of the carceral state.”

“Let it also clarify what we have known for years: this city’s much-heralded class of progressive electeds will take us only to the point of reform, not beyond. #NoNewJails,” he wrote on X.

Curtis Sliwa, the Republican Party nominee for mayor, has long opposed closing the Rikers Island complex, a position clearly spelled out on his campaign website.

He ripped Cuomo’s about-face as a desperate political ploy.

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“New Yorkers are watching a Cuomo that is so desperate for personal redemption that he will say whatever is convenient,” Sliwa said.

“Andrew Cuomo puts Andrew Cuomo first,” Sliwa said.

“While the ‘C’ in Curtis Sliwa stands for consistency, the ‘C’ in Andrew Cuomo stands for chaos.”

Cuomo often needled then-Mayor Bill de Blasio for not moving fast enough with a plan to replace it.

After hearing criticism, the Cuomo campaign Wednesday night insisted the ex-governor’s announcement on keeping Rikers Island open as a jail complex — albeit a newly built one —  was not a change in position. 

“This is wholly consistent with what the governor always said and still says: the current Rikers facility should be closed, he never supported de Blasio’s bungled borough jail plan and nobody — including Mamdani as recently as this summer — believes it  is remotely feasible,” said Cuomo spokesman Richard Azzopardi.