“Our house has been on fire for almost four months, but City Hall and 1 Police Plaza are just now reaching for the garden hose,” he said in a statement. “These new recruits won’t hit the street until the middle of next year, and then we’ll still be seriously short-handed as we battle the massive spike in shootings, a rising murder rate and growing disorder of every kind.”

The Mayor’s Office and the NYPD did not respond to requests about the budget line being allocated for the academy class. According to the Citizens Budget Commission, however, total savings from the cancellation of the March and July classes, which were penciled in through at least 2024, were estimated at $81 million.

The COVID-19 pandemic caused delays of the release of this data until this month. The City Council's preliminary analysis is the first of a "deeper" dive expected next year with more information on job titles, experience, education, and previous jobs, according to the City Council.

The analysis was gleaned from 180,000 salaries from full-time city workers of dozens of agencies, from transportation and parks to finance and sanitation. The city's entire municipal workforce at the end of fiscal year 2019 reached nearly 327,000, according to the Citizens Budget Commission.

New York City sales tax revenue remained in the dumps during the third quarter, even as the rest of the state recovered to 2019 levels of economic activity, according to a report from the Citizens Budget Commission released Tuesday.

Taxable sales, the amount of economic activity from which the city can skim, were down 23 percent from June to August compared with the year before, according to the report. While that is an improvement from the height of the pandemic, when year-over-year activity was down 37 percent during the second quarter, it still painted an ominous fiscal picture and stood in stark contrast to elsewhere in the state.

By itself, there’s nothing wrong with refinancing debt with low interest rates to spread out payments, especially with the dramatic revenue crunches now facing many governments. The danger comes when debt keeps piling up without adequate future revenues to cover it.

For example, New York City is seeking state authorization for short-term borrowing to buffer its Covid-related budget woes, but business observers fear that will lead to permanent borrowing to cover operating expenses. So the business community wants the city to cut spending. And if borrowing is allowed, the Citizens Budget Commission and other business-oriented groups want the city’s budget to be controlled by the state Financial Control Board, first established in the city’s 1970s fiscal crisis.

What about borrowing from the Federal Reserve’s Municipal Liquidity Facility (MLF) set up to backstop liquidity in the private muni market? The Fed never wanted the MLF to be a regular borrowing or funding mechanism for cities and states, and set higher interest rates accordingly. As a result, only two loans have been made—to the state of Illinois and the New York Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA).

Cuomo recently said he would postpone major fiscal policy decisions until after Election Day in hopes of a Democratic victory that would spearhead a COVID-19 pandemic relief package for states. Without that aid, the Democratic governor has said, tax increases and spending cuts will be necessary to combat $30 billion of projected revenue shortfalls through the 2022 fiscal year.

“It is hard to imagine a federal aid package that would be large enough to close the state’s gaps, particularly on an ongoing basis,” said David Friedfel, director of state studies for the Citizens Budget Commission, an independent fiscal watchdog. “The longer the state waits, the harder it is to balance the budget and will make next year even harder to close those gaps if federal aid doesn’t come.”

While the state has managed to reduce its budget deficit to around $9 billion largely through $4 billion of spending cuts from a hiring freeze and suspending pay raises, Friedfel said, more long-term measures are needed without relying on Congress. Even if the Democrats are able to assume control of the White House and Senate in January, he said, there is no guarantee an aid package would arrive in time for the Empire State’s 2022 fiscal year that commences April 1.

New York budgets need all the help they can get as the pandemic continues to wallop public finances and further federal aid remains stalled in Congress. The state is projecting a $30 billion revenue hit by the end of next fiscal year while New York City is facing a $9 billion deficit.

Maria Doulis, vice president of the nonpartisan fiscal watchdog Citizens Budget Commission, said that while Wall Street workers earn outsize salaries compared with the average New Yorker, the industry’s success provides money for social services, small-business support and the core services that residents rely on.

“The connection through Wall Street and Main Street is really through the budget,” she said.

The insurance issue is another black eye for the ferry service, which critics have called a distraction from more workable and equitable mass transit solutions from the moment the mayor put on the captain’s hat. The ferry system is one of the most subsidized transit options in the entire city, with Citizens Budget Commission analysis last year showing that even with more riders and additional routes, a ferry ride comes in at almost 10 times the cost of a subway or bus ride for city taxpayers. The high subsidy, the result of a $2.75 fare to match what landlubbing transit riders pay, has mostly benefitted riders making between $75,000 and $99,000 per year. The ferry also struggled with long lines and frustrated riders earlier this year due to returning crowds attempting to get on boats operating at reduced capacity due to coronavirus restrictions.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo claims he’s trying to forestall economic “damage” by delaying steps to plug the state budget gap, but watchdogs, schools and local governments are right to warn of major pain from his delay itself.

And, by the way, that gap (Cuomo says it’s $30 billion over two years) isn’t soon vanishing: Monday, Comptroller Tom DiNapoli reported sales tax receipts alone are down $2.8 billion this year.

“I’m not going to do any damage [like budget cuts] to the state’s economy until you tell me that is the last resort,” the gov says. OK, we’ll tell you: “It’s the last resort, Gov!”

Cuomo hopes if Joe Biden wins the White House and Democrats take over the Senate they’ll quickly rush him billions to bail him out. Yet “even if there is a large federal aid package, it’s very unlikely it will cover the whole gap,” warns David Friedfel of the independent Citizens Budget Commission.

He is betting that Democrats led by Joe Biden will win the White House and take control of the U.S. Senate. Together, Cuomo said, they will provide the federal aid needed to meet the state’s costs and lost revenues from the economic shutdown forced by the virus. So far, Trump and the GOP-controlled Senate have rejected that level of aid.

Analysts say there are many risks in that gambit.

"Even if there is a large federal aid package, it’s very unlikely it will cover the whole gap," said David Friedfel of the independent Citizens Budget Commission.

Last year, Council members lambasted Amazon’s plans for a new headquarters in Long Island City, Queens, helping push the tech giant to back out. After years of developer-friendly deals under the Bloomberg administration, city leaders voiced outrage over perks de Blasio and Gov. Cuomo had offered Amazon.

“If we end up having an anti-dynamic climate, a stagnation-oriented climate, then we won’t have the jobs and we won’t have the housing that New Yorkers need,” said Andrew Rein, president of the Citizens Budget Commission.

Maria Doulis, vice president of the Citizens Budget Commission, a nonpartisan fiscal watchdog, said the exodus of families could hurt the city’s tax base and make it harder to maintain services.

“Some of the calculus is changing for families,” said Ms. Doulis. “We need more people to be in the city to keep our city growing and our economy thriving. Parents who choose to raise children here are part of that ecosystem.”

Fewer families with small children, however, could create more buying opportunities for young New Yorkers and easier entry for children into the city’s competitive schools. Some neighborhoods in the boroughs have even become more popular during the pandemic, like in Brooklyn, where August sales rose 87%.

Environmental groups are pushing for a review of tax exemptions that promote the use of fossil fuels, calling for the Assembly to act on a bill to review and ultimately end the majority of them.

The New York League of Conservation Voters and Citizens Budget Commission recently released a report on various tax breaks and other spending that subsidize fossil fuel use.