Slashing $1 billion from the NYPD would likely mean layoffs for 7,500 to 8,000 officers, according to a Citizens Budget Commission analysis.

“We’re in a very severe final crisis and there can’t be any sacred cows so you have to make cuts to balance the budget,” Citizens Budget Commission vice president Maria Doulis told CO. “The cuts should be focused on improving efficiency and not cutting services and part of achieving this is shrinking the size of the workforce including the NYPD.”

The state has balked at city borrowing since unchecked lending in the 1970s led to a financial crisis, said Maria Doulis of the Citizens Budget Commission.

“The amount that needed to be borrowed grew and grew each year until it reached the point where it became unsustainable,” Doulis said. “Budget watchdogs frown on borrowing because it's really living against your means.”

A spokesman for Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who raised concerns about the city’s initial request, didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. Andrew Rein, president of Citizens Budget Commission, a nonpartisan fiscal watchdog, said that borrowing was premature and the mayor could find savings in partnership with the city workforce.

New York City faced major hits from the coronavirus. More than 17,000 people are confirmed to have died from the virus. The pandemic devastated the once-booming economy as the city went into lockdown in March.

Andrew Rein, the president of the Citizens Budget Commission, a nonprofit watchdog group, told the Times, “There are trade offs. When you weigh these projects, something has to give. If the city were to do this, what project would it decide not to do?”

Maria Doulis, Vice President of the nonpartisan watchdog Citizens Budget Commission said historically the mayor of New York has wide digression on where to cut. However, the CBC said there are other maneuvers to be made before layoffs are needed.

Doulis suggested most of the reductions could be accomplished with normal retirement and turnover in a year or two. She also said it may be time for city workers to start contributing to their healthcare packages, which could lead to significant long-term savings.

“Most employees and retirees do not pay any share of the premiums for their health insurance,” Doulis said. “Obviously that’s in contrast to what most people do with private companies, but it’s also in contrast to other public employees, for example at the state government level.”

Budget watchers said the pandemic has wreck havoc on fiscal planning.

“It's a volatile situation that’s evolving quickly and given the unprecedented nature of this crisis, it's been really hard to estimate what the impact would look like,” said Maria Doulis, vice president of strategy, operations, and communications for the Citizens Budget Commission.

With more planning, Doulis said the mayor could have reduced the workforce through attrition, choosing not to hire new workers when older ones retired over a period of several years.

Despite the partial hiring freeze enacted by the city in fiscal year 2017, the Citizens Budget Commission found city employee headcounts had grown every year since. Doulis said under the current Executive Budget, city workers would dip in 2021, then rise through 2024.

"It was really shocking that their projection for headcount is an actual increase over the four year period," said Doulis. "I think it's completely unrealistic and doesn't demonstrate an assertive approach to managing the budget."

The administration could've identified more surgical means of reducing spending, Doulis said, like amending health insurance plans, so workers had to pay premiums, not the city. She said the current payment plan is out of step with the private sector and most other state and local governments.

So far the mayor has said he will not meet the mark of $1 billion, and the City Council has made a vague promise of it. Comptroller Scott Stringer has come up with a plan that would get the NYPD there by cutting staff through attrition and cutting overtime. The way I see it is this will come down to jobs: the budget of the NYPD is 88 percent personnel. And 1800 of those NYPD jobs were just added in by the City Council in fiscal year 2016. So there will have to be some major negotiations. (See this Citizens Budget Commission report for a really good FAQ, and more analysis here from Gotham Gazette.)

De Blasio’s comments come a month after the Citizens Budget Commission, a nonprofit, nonpartisan civic affairs organization, called on the city to enact a reduction in force as a proactive measure to prevent a deeper recession and a slower recovery.

The mayor said he’s seen the commission’s recommendations and said some of its ideas are more plausible than others. However, he doesn’t want to pursue austerity because he thinks it's smarter to fund city services than cut them.

“If the city’s leaders are willing to make the right and reasonable hard choices, they can balance the budget without asking future generations to pay for today’s bills or resorting to layoffs,” said Andrew Rein, president of the watchdog Citizens Budget Commission.

“New York should receive but cannot wait around for a large federal aid package. It swiftly should reduce spending, shrink the workforce through attrition, and collaborate with labor to identify and implement savings,” Rein added.

“This strategy can close next year’s projected budget gap and rightly leaves borrowing as a last resort, only to be considered if the economy worsens and additional spending cuts ultimately become too great.”

CBC’s expense reductions include paring the workforce by 9,000, mostly through attrition.

It also called for a temporary two-year property tax increase, starting in July 2021 with expected economic recovery. CBC said a 2% increase in the average rate, from 12.283% to 12.529%, implemented effective July 1, 2021, through June 30, 2023, would generate $690 million in fiscal 2022.

“The average homeowner would pay $143 more in fiscal year 2022,” CBC said.

The city, according to CBC, could also consider selling parking lots and underused buildings, which could generate $50 million in FY2021. In addition, said CBC, the city could reduce its $1 billion general reserve to $250 million for FY22 through FY24, releasing $750 million per year for gap closing.

Budget watchdogs, for starters, note 22,000 layoffs would save far more than $1 billion. The Citizens Budget Commission says losing 9,000 jobs over two years via a real job freeze alone could do the trick.

“Better to work with labor to increase productivity, reduce the workforce through attrition” and have workers chip in for health benefits, says CBC prez Andrew Rein.

Prospects for additional federal aid are unclear, significant cuts in state aid remain a threat and a bill to allow the city to cover shortfalls with borrowing remains stalled in Albany.

“The combined diversity and magnitude of uncertainties may be unprecedented,” said Andrew Rein, president of Citizens Budget Commission, a fiscal watchdog group. “It is incumbent on the city’s leaders to adopt a budget based on judicious estimates, and modify the budget during the year if needed.”

Maria Doulis of the Citizens Budget Commission said de Blasio should strike deals with the city’s labor unions so workers pay for a share of their health insurance and other benefits, as is standard practice in the private sector.

“They haven’t been aggressive enough in cutting the budget and really rising to the fiscal crisis caused by the coronavirus,” she said.

“This is a multi-year problem that requires long-term solutions and aggressively getting ahead of the problem.”