According to the watchdog Citizens Budget Commission, had the city committed to achieving efficiency savings of just 1% of city-funded spending annually since fiscal 2015, FY21 budget would be $2 billion less. Average annual budget growth, the CBC said, would have been 4.7% instead of 5.2%.

Fiscal watchdogs, including the Citizens Budget Commission, warned Cuomo and lawmakers, who are eager to pass an early state budget, that they should shy away from raising taxes and nix all controversial policy items.

“It doesn’t make sense to bog down the budget document with extraneous things right now,” said CBC top researcher David Friedfel.

The independent Citizens Budget Commission urged Cuomo and the legislature to adopt a "bare-bones budget" by April 1, then adjust.

"The immediate challenge for New York’s elected leaders is to quickly pass a budget that sustains essential public services, provides for emergency responses to the growing pandemic, and prepares New York for an economically uncertain future," said CBC President Andrew Rein.

Given the growing uncertainty, the Citizens Budget Commission, a business-backed budget watchdog, called on the state to adopt a crisis-response “bare-bones” budget that can be modified in he coming months. The state should stop increasing education aid for wealthy school districts, saving $700 million, and redesign its Medicaid program, the most generous in the U.S. The state shouldn’t raise taxes, the CBC said.

“There were questions from the beginning about whether the M.T.A. could implement this very large and ambitious capital plan,” said Maria Doulis, vice president of the Citizens Budget Commission, a watchdog group. “Now there are even larger questions about whether this can proceed given the M.T.A.’s finances.”

Norman Steisel, a consultant who previously served as deputy mayor and DSNY commissioner, told Waste Dive he believes the question at hand is larger than any policy to encourage behavioral change. In his view, making something mandatory is the easy part (curbside recycling still has partial participation after being mandatory for decades) but planning for the full scope of logistical and infrastructure factors involved is what's necessary. ​

"It’s a very modest step forward into the unknown," said Steisel. “I think their legislative intent, which on the surface looks appealing, is going to fall far short of what needs to be done.”

Citing research by the Citizens Budget Commission, Steisel mentioned that in-sink devices could be a more viable solution for certain building types as one example of thinking beyond a citywide curbside collection mandate. He also raised the need for council members to take a more active role in working to site processing infrastructure within the city, rather than relying on external infrastructure, and to consider the role of biogas in heating buildings or being converted into fuel for city vehicles.​

Richard Webster, attorney for Riverkeeper, a principal advocate for closure of Indian Point power plant, has written a deeply misleading response to an opinion piece in which Herschel Specter and I urged that the Indian Point nuclear plant, the largest source of carbon-free energy in the downstate region, be kept open.

Websters treats the generally laudable goals of New York’s 2019 landmark climate legislation as if they are on the way to being achieved. In fact, the prestigious Citizens Budget Commission has shown that the early goals in this legislation are “likely infeasible.” Mr. Specter and I have demonstrated elsewhere that attempting to meet the new law’s 2030 goal with only renewable sources would cost more than $100 billion and is completely impractical. In both the short and long term, nuclear power must be a part of New York’s energy future if we are to end the use of fossil fuels. Closing Indian Point will be a giant step backwards, setting us back a decade and probably more.

Months from now, when, hopefully, the dust starts to settle on the coronavirus outbreak, attention will likely shift from the immediate danger of the pandemic and the strain on health care resources, to the lasting consequences on the city and state’s economy.

Already, with New York moving to shut down restaurants – with the exception of take-out and delivery orders – bars, theaters and more businesses, some city and state officials are calling attention to the impact those public health actions will have on workers in retail, hospitality and more. “We are going to have to recreate economic capacity because people are going to be without,” New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said Monday morning, during an interview on MSNBC. “If you don't have money, you can't pay the rent, you can't buy food, you can't buy medicine.”

David Friedfel, director of state studies at the Citizens Budget Commission, a good government group, said that other actions – like making changes to when people qualify for unemployment insurance and when people become eligible for Medicaid – may be more likely than freezing rent payments. “The availability of government resources to help people in need is an easier lift than forcing other private sector individuals or companies to accept late rent payments or that kind of a thing,” Friedfel said.

Of course, some of the recommended action – for example, a universal basic income – would be more likely to come from the federal government. Sen. Mitt Romney supported a version of universal basic income on Monday, proposing sending $1,000 checks to each American, as well as providing grants to impacted small businesses. New York City and state are also, like most other states and localities, more limited in how they can spend. Both because requirements to have balanced budgets and because of the fact that they can’t print money, the city and state are not able to run deficits like the federal government can.

Other options at the state’s disposal are dipping into its “rainy day reserve fund” – reserves set aside in case of a financial downtown, but which state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli has in the past said should have more money injected into it. Friedfel said even though the reserves aren’t as strong as they could be, now is the time to dip into the rainy day fund. “It’s raining,” Friedfel said.

The federal government might come to the short-term rescue of New York state, but the coronavirus is expected to cost the city more than $3 billion in the next few months. New York's ability to cope with the crisis could depend on what Albany and City Hall do in the next few weeks.

Stringer called for immediate action to reduce spending, by requiring city agencies to find $1.4 billion in savings. The Citizens Budget Commission last week suggested a similar amount, which amounts to only about 2% of the total budget. It might not be adequate.

The CBC agrees. “The state should use federal relief for new Medicaid and fiscal needs from the pandemic and economic hit,” President Andrew Rein said. “New York state still needs to still address the original underlying Medicaid gap.”

Millions of New Yorkers may soon need to separate scraps of fruit, vegetables and meat into separate garbage receptacles every time they cook and do dishes — learning another new habit just as they did with plastics recycling in the 1980s and are now doing under a recent ban on plastic shopping bags.

Skeptics say mandatory composting could be prohibitively expensive. In 2016, the nonpartisan Citizens Budget Commission concluded that separate collection of organics would cost New York between $177 million and $251 million annually.

The problems will multiply if the coronavirus triggers a recession.

"The MTA receives its revenues through fares tolls and a lot of taxes, economically sensitive taxes," said Citizens Budget Commission President Andrew Rein

That's why transit watch dogs say the MTA may need funding help from the federal government. The head of the MTA agrees.

How severe a financial hit New York City will take during the COVID-19 pandemic is as much of an unknown as the degree of virus spread.

"I don't think for most of us, even who have been in public life a long time, we've seen a situation quite like this where we receive extraordinary new information on what now literally feels like an hourly basis," Mayor Bill de Blasio told reporters Thursday while declaring a state of emergency. "The last 24 hours have been very, very sobering."

The crisis has also revived the question of whether the city has enough reserves to withstand a downfall. Roughly $6 billion of reserves consists of set-asides for emergencies or revenue shortfalls. Voters in November approved the establishment of a rainy day fund, which the capital markets perceive as credit solidifiers, but it remains unfinished business.

"We do have workarounds in the city and we do have rainy day funds in the state, but the key is they're not effective unless you use them," said Andrew Rein, president of the watchdog Citizens Budget Commission. "The city and state need to be fiscally stable themselves, or they won't have the ability to protect New Yorkers or New York businesses."