Officials from Mayor De Blasio’s administration created the idea to incentivize COVID-19 vaccines by offering people $100 to get the shot — a day before President Biden went national with the plan.
“Our public health team is in nearly constant contact with the national public health team,” Bill Neidhardt, Mayor de Blasio’s press secretary, told The Post.
“I don’t want to speak to specific conversations,” Neidhardt added, when asked if Biden’s team reached out to City Hall about the mayor’s announcement on the $100 prizes Wednesday.
But a city official said the mayor’s team hatched the idea before the president.
On Thursday the Treasury Department said Biden wants state and local governments to consider funding $100 payments through $350 billion in federal relief funds included in Biden’s $1.9 trillion relief bill that passed in March.
Before the announcement de Blasio said during his daily press briefing that he’s prepared to spend at least $20 million for the program.
“What I would be thrilled to see is hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers to come forward quickly to get this incentive,” de Blasio said.
Almost 60 percent of the city’s population of 8.4 million people have gotten at least one shot.
De Blasio said there’s plenty of money in the city’s nearly $100 billion budget set aside for vaccination efforts to fund the giveaways.
Leave a Reply