ed-up tenants filed a new lawsuit against the city’s embattled housing authority on Wednesday, challenging the agency over squalid and dangerous conditions in the Big Apple’s public housing complexes.

“NYCHA’s total abrogation of its responsibilities goes far beyond neglect,” residents claimed in the class-action tort, which was filed in Brooklyn Supreme Court. “NYCHA has engaged in a systematic abdication of its duties, accompanied by an organized system for disguising its dereliction.”

However, other efforts to generate badly needed funds by allowing developers to lease land to build market-rate housing have run into stiff opposition from tenants and surrounding residents.

A September report from the Citizens Budget Commission went so far as to say the program has “stalled.”

City Hall and NYCHA representatives did not immediately return requests for comment on the suit.

What could possibly go wrong this time?

Two of Albany’s “three pols in a room” want to fix the state’s controversial bail-reform law the same way it got messed up in the first place — through closed-door negotiations over the state budget.

“If we can change it within the budget, in ways that will enhance what it is we are doing, I think we ought to do it.”

Stewart-Cousins’ remarks echo­ed comments made Monday by Cuomo, who said he favored using the budget process — rather than the public legislative process — to amend the bail-reform law that’s now opposed by 59 percent of voters, according to a poll released Monday by Siena College.

David Friedfel, of the Citizens Budget Commission, said Wednesday any changes to the bail-reform law should be enacted through stand-alone legislation.

“It makes sure that constituents are able to reach out to elected officials before they vote and elected officials know what they are voting on,” he said.

Maria Doulis of the Citizens Budget Commission and Howard Cure of Evercore Wealth Management examine how the state's Medicare cost crisis could affect the city's budget. They also discuss the MTA, public housing and property tax overhaul. Paul Burton hosts.

New York is considering ending a practice that allows one spouse to legally refuse to pay for nursing home care for the other — while passing the bill to Medicaid.

The state has a mandate to cut $2.5 billion from Medicaid in New York, Cuomo has told the Medicaid Redesign Team to consider ending spousal refusal and the team’s recommendations are to be included in the new state budget.

“The purpose of Medicaid is to help people who financially can’t afford health insurance,” said David Friedfel, director of state studies for the independent Citizens Budget Commission. “Spousal refusal basically provides a way for individuals or families who know how to negotiate the process to get around the requirements … It is unfair.”

The federal government has denied $625 million in grants that were to help move more Medicaid patients from expensive emergency room care to clinics and smaller medical facilities across the state, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said Monday.

Cuomo said the state was notified on Friday by the Trump administration that it won’t continue the $8 billion grant awarded in 2014. Most of the $7.4 billion received so far was spent by hospitals to transition health care from emergency rooms to more efficient community-based care in neighborhood facilities.

The Trump administration’s action wasn’t a surprise.

“They put the writing on the wall that they were not likely to approve this,” said David Friedfel of the independent Citizens Budget Commission. “This was not for operations, so it shouldn’t be a problem to operate the facilities … this was supposed to be for brand-new investments.”

The Citizens Budget Commission’s testimony before a joint committee of state Senate and Assembly members hasn’t been discussed much statewide.

It should be.

For those concerned with New York’s profligate spending habits, the commission’s recommendations for state aid to schools provides an interesting counterpoint to the traditional yearly narrative emanating from Albany in the winter and early spring months. As politicians and state Education Department officials railed against the governor’s measly increases to education spending, the Citizens Budget Commission testified that the state is providing $750 million more than necessary to provide a sound, basic education to the state’s students.

The commission doesn’t argue that all students are receiving a sound, basic education, nor that all districts have the resources they need. Twenty-five districts lacked the resources necessary to fund a sound, basic education in 2017-18, with 21 of them among the lowest wealth districts in the state.

Medicaid pays the bill for two of every three New York nursing home residents and for more than half of all births in the state.

New York covers dental, vision, eyeglasses, physical therapy and some other medical services not covered by some other states’ Medicaid programs.

The state pays out more than $1 billion in Medicaid money a year to hospitals to cover the cost of charity care for uninsured patients, even though some of the hospitals don’t need it.

Cuomo put the brakes on Medicaid spending growth when he took office in 2011. Cuomo imposed a “global cap” on Medicaid spending tied to the medical inflation rate and took other steps that curbed spending. But the state lost control of Medicaid spending again in 2016. From 2016 to 2019, the state’s Medicaid cost per enrollee soared 25 percent, according to the state Citizens Budget Commission.

Progressive activists, as they do every year, are calling for new state taxes on the rich, but this year they have some new arguments for why it is to the political benefit of suburban Democratic senators worried about their 2020 reelection campaigns.

There could be some wiggle room for them on some proposals as budget negotiations get underway between Cuomo, Heastie, and Stewart-Cousins. The governor has supported in the past new levies on pied-à-terre and hedge fund managers. “We would have to review the specifics,” Cuomo spokesman Rich Azzopardi said about the governor’s support for such proposals moving forward. Stewart-Cousins meanwhile has said tax increases as the “first fall back” but taxes targeting billionaires would not exactly violate her stated commitment to protecting “middle class and low income New Yorkers.”

Fiscal conservatives have warned that any attempt to raise taxes on the wealthy could hurt rather than help the state’s bottom line. The top 1% of income tax filers in the state account for more than a third of top earners, according to research by the Citizens Budget Commission. The state is more dependent than ever on taxes from a few dozen billionaires at the very top and if just a few of them move out of state then it could make a big difference in state revenues, fiscal watchdogs warn.

A year after Amazon.com Inc. abandoned its plans to build a campus in Queens, state lawmakers who opposed the project are looking to rein in the subsidy programs that New York City officials used to lure the company.

Nearly 200 firms received a total of $33 million through the program in 2019, city budget documents show.

Under the program, Amazon was promised nearly $900 million of credits over 20 years for creating up to 25,000 jobs. According to the Citizens Budget Commission, a nonpartisan fiscal watchdog, this would have been the largest award ever given through the program, which is available to any company that meets its criteria.

Despite Cuomo’s claims of irresponsible spending, experts hold that it is the state, not localities, that controls the more powerful levers of Medicaid, specifically reimbursement rates and eligibility standards. “Localities have very little control over Medicaid spending, so to shift the burden onto them would be unfair and in many ways regressive,” said Dave Freidfel, director of state studies at the Citizens Budget Commission, a research and advocacy organization that supports fiscal restraint. “It’s saying that because you have a lot of people who need Medicaid, people who don’t have a lot of income, that means that you as a locality need to pay more. That’s just the wrong approach and it’s not how any other state in the country does it.”

However it happens, Maria Doulis of the Citizens Budget Commission says more insight into the city’s project spending will be welcome. She said she’s tried but failed to monitor projects through existing channels.

“It’s really hard to put that together because we lack data on actual costs and timelines for projects,” she said.

“Getting the data is going to allow both the Council and watchdogs to ask better questions, and to understand what we’re getting out of the capital program, because infrastructure is really important, and maintaining infrastructure is important,” said Doulis. “And we don’t know enough about how well the city is doing.”

"High returns are good for taxpayers who support the pension system and retirees and employees who are members of it," said Andrew Rein of the independent Citizens Budget Commission. "Still, economic uncertainty nationally persists and there could be further volatility in the markets."