The original op-ed can be found here.

Upon getting elected, Mayor-elect Eric Adams vowed to “get stuff done.” Adams’ focus on delivering core services and managing the budget is exactly right. From safety to education and more, the city is not delivering the quality New Yorkers deserve, pay for or need.

But government working well does not just happen magically. It takes diligence, deliberate action and accountability, as the Citizens Budget Commission’s report ”Getting the Basics Right,” published as part of New York University Wagner’s NYC 2025 lays out.

While getting the basics right may not sound tantalizing, it is what New York needs to be safe, healthy and prosperous, to attract tourists and foster opportunity.

This starts with prioritizing core services — including public safety, education, sanitation, health and NYCHA. Without safe and clean streets, quality education for all students, better affordable housing and our health protected, New York will stagnate rather than achieve its greatest glories.

These core services then must be relentlessly well managed. Management matters — a lot.

Not to retread, but let’s look at ThriveNYC, which aimed at real problems but failed to sufficiently deliver. It wasn’t targeted where the data showed the greatest need, and did not set specific goals, manage by data, adjust when the impact was low and publicly report critical metrics.

Adams, who was part of CompStat’s beginnings at the NYPD, should prioritize instituting a performance management process citywide, as he has advocated. To drive change and results, this requires the right data and the right review and accountability process. Complementing his proposed unified data platform, Adams should set a framework defining the right data and process and then adapt it to each agency’s services and culture; one size will not fit all.

Cascading from the mayor to front-line managers and workers, officials should use the data to track and manage what is being spent and how, what outputs are being delivered, service quality and efficiency (including unit costs) and ultimate impacts. The process should identify and fix problems, expand successes, suspend failures and increase accountability.

One pressing priority is ensuring $13 billion in COVID federal aid has impact. The administration should make public detailed data on federal COVID revenues, expenditures and program activities and outcomes. Given this and the growing influx of state education aid, New Yorkers should be able to see how much pandemic-related learning loss is reversed, and whether these funds are accelerating achievement and reducing disparities.

Fixing the Mayor’s Management Report to reflect New Yorkers’ needs and administration priorities will help revitalize New Yorkers’ confidence in their government. In addition to adding better efficiency, effectiveness and quality data, the MMR should include surveyed New Yorkers’ assessments of the city’s services and environment.

Fiscal instability, however, threatens even the best-managed city. Rather than continuing to expand government, the budget and workforce should be brought to levels supported by the city’s already high taxes. The city faces $5 billion annual budget gaps starting next year. Revenues in the short term may be higher and some spending lower than expected, but the mayor will need savings to balance his January Preliminary FY 2023 Budget. Over the longer run, greater efforts are needed to stabilize the budget when COVID federal aid funding 3-K education and other programs runs out.

Adams has called for a 3-5% savings Program to Eliminate the Gap (“PEG”), exactly right in size and strategy. For decades, the PEG process generated savings proposals, which ideally leverage technology, redesign operations, share services and manage functions like fleet and office space citywide in order to improve efficiency to minimize impact on the public. This should be intimately tied to the new performance management system.

Additional budget savings should come from bringing health benefit costs to sustainable levels by reasonable employee premium-sharing, like that for state employees.

Whether modernizing operations or identifying budget savings, administration-municipal union collaboration is key. The next round of collective bargaining agreements is critical — a city-saver or a budget-buster.

Together, the administration and labor can find efficiencies to help close budget gaps and fund the raises we all would like to give to the workforce. The alternatives — no raises or raises that require service cuts to fund them — can be avoided. Let’s also make city employment an enticing road to career advancement and skills growth in addition to being a stable job.

Finally, the administration should focus on growing jobs and housing. Improving land-use decision-making, reforming the property tax and performance-based, targeted economic development incentives will help the city provide for New Yorkers.

Adams has the incredible opportunity to lead the recovery, make the city more competitive, improve the quality of life and promote greater opportunity and equity. While New York City has proven amazingly resilient throughout its history, getting the basics right will help ensure the city delivers for all New Yorkers, especially those in need.