Andrew Rein, of the Citizens Budget Commission, says the absence of federal aid "makes the city's job much harder."

"It will have to manage much more tightly, prioritize essential services for needy New Yorkers now, manage even better so that New York can come out of this stable and competitive and able to help people," said Rein, adding that any federal aid that does come should be a "bridge" to recovery—and the city should be identifying other ways to save now, leaving borrowing as a "last resort."

Citizens Budget Commission, a nonprofit group, released a report on September 2 that identified more than a dozen viable measures that could substitute for layoffs and borrowing and altogether save more than $1 billion. “The Mayor presents New Yorkers with a false choice: either borrow to fund operations or lay off 22,000 municipal employees,” said CBC President Andrew Rein in a statement. “Neither currently is necessary and both have far reaching negative impacts.”



As CBC also noted, the adopted budget eliminates funds set aside in the city’s labor reserves for future wage increases. “Eliminating the funds essentially means the City’s starting position for negotiations will be a two-year wage freeze,” the CBC report reads, adding that a wage freeze is an “appropriate” step to take, though de Blasio has thus far downplayed the idea.

Throughout her tenure, Garcia fought with the mayor’s Office of Management and Budget over the short-term cost of the program, which has been pegged at up to $251 million by the nonpartisan Citizens Budget Commission. De Blasio’s failure to institute it remains one of the single biggest policy shortcomings of his environmental agenda.



“I would be very committed to universal organics collection” as mayor, Garcia said. “I think it’s key to battling climate change.”

On the public-sector end, de Blasio is under pressure from civic groups like the Citizens Budget Commission to stick to his demand for $1 billion in productivity savings.

The mayor also suggested that he won’t need to seek savings or make layoffs if the federal government provides aid or if Albany gives the city the OK to borrow.

Fiscal experts oppose borrowing because it supports spending that won’t be sustainable in future years without more borrowing.

Any borrowing should be accompanied by a clear plan for how the city plans to use the funds to stabilize its finances and what it is doing to ensure the government is the right size for New York’s needs and revenues. “Otherwise, we’re using borrowing to prop up spending we can’t afford,” said Andrew Rein, president of the Citizens Budget Commission, a nonpartisan watchdog group. “We’ll make our kids pay our bills.”

The Citizens Budget Commission has developed an overview of the CLCPA and its targets, Green in Perspective: 6 Facts to Help New Yorkers Understand the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, that provides good background information. The CLCPA was described as the most ambitious and comprehensive climate and clean energy legislation in the country when Cuomo signed the legislation. Unfortunately, the politicians that passed this law assumed that their political will was sufficient to make it happen and included no provision to determine whether it can work or how much it will cost. I have written a series of posts on the feasibility, implications and consequences of this aspect of the law based on evaluation of data.

A recent NYC Citizens Budget Commission report confirms that the MTA $51 billion 2020 - 2024 Capital Plan is no longer financially feasible.

Within this plan, there is $4 billion of local funding for the $6.9 billion Second Avenue Subway Phase Two, $1.5 billion for the Bronx East Metro North Penn Station Access, tens of millions for the 1% Arts in Transit capital projects expenditure requirement and several hundred million on outside consultants. Why not use in-house resources instead of outside consultants? There is also millions for planning feasibility studies to look at potential system expansion projects that we will probably never see in our lifetime. All combined could provide the MTA with $6 billion more toward COVID-19.

The flight out of New York City could inhibit the city’s economic recovery and its ability to maintain quality-of-life services such as police and sanitation, says Maria Doulis, vice president of strategy and operations at the Citizens Budget Commission, a nonpartisan fiscal watchdog. “What is worrisome is that the high-income earners, particularly those with more than $1 million, provide a substantial amount of resources to the New York City budget,” she says. “To lose them would really represent a blow to the budget.”

David Friedfel, the director of state studies with the Citizens Budget Commission, said the state’s richest 1 percent pay about 40 percent of the state’s personal income tax. This amounts to about $20 billion.

It’s likely that Congress will need to provide substantial funding to prevent a calamity in the loss of services from state and municipal governments. But progressives cannot simply rely on the same plan they pull out whenever New York confronts a revenue problem: soak the rich. Lawmakers must help create an environment where companies want to be in New York.

Fiscal watchdogs have argued that the city need not borrow funds nor implement layoffs to close the $1 billion budget gap. The Citizens Budget Commission, a nonprofit group, released a report on Wednesday that recommended a series of steps including reducing the costs of employee benefits (particularly health care spending) and implementing broader productivity reforms.

“The state, the city, and the MTA all are in severe fiscal stress because of the virus, which then translated into a severe recession," said Andrew Rein, president of the Citizens Budget Commission. "This policy will reduce federal aid for certain activities that are going to be conducted by the city by the state and of course as we’re talking about, by the MTA.”

FEMA's policy earned a rebuke from Schumer and Governor Andrew Cuomo.

The MTA chairman is being more dramatic, saying it sends a message to commuters and transit workers of "drop dead."

The Citizens Budget Commission, the business-funded fiscal watchdog known for taking a bite out of municipal workers' hides whenever an opportunity exists to reduce city payroll costs, is on the same page with municipal unions in its opposition to layoffs as a way of saving $1 billion.

In virtually all other respects, however, the CBC 's remedies for what ails the city are sure to raise labor's hackles, as it urges savings from matters affecting all city workers—by requiring them to pay a portion of their health-care premiums—to those affecting small percentages of the workforce, such as renegotiating the two-worker truck differential negotiated 40 years ago for Sanitation Workers.