With a total of $84.1 million, the Capitol Region may not be the state’s biggest beneficiary of this year’s Regional Economic Development Council awards — that honor goes to the Southern Tier, which is getting $88.9 million. But the local region’s plumbing, specifically its water and sewer systems, will get a big boost.

The awards, announced Thursday at the Albany Capital Center, included a boatload of grants to study, plan and upgrade the area’s water and sewer infrastructure as well as support numerous waterfront parks, promenades and other developments.

And some of the allocations are placeholders. For instance, the Capital Region’s awards included $25 million for unspecified tax-exempt bonds and future tax credits for creating or retaining jobs in targeted industries.

“This isn’t a check that’s going out the door — this is a commitment, this is a step in the process,” said David Friedfel, director of state studies for the Citizens Budget Commission, a fiscal watchdog group.

Friedfel's group has described the REDC program is an improvement on upon past efforts — programs that were often derided as political pork or worse. Still, he said, there is still room for improvement.

For one thing, it’s hard to track all the expenditures over time to see how well they’ve paid off. And while the CBC approves of using the money for infrastructure, they believe development funds should be better targeted toward specific industries. And the way in which the awards are spread fairly evenly by region makes it seem more political than economic in intent.

If it were really driven by the need for development, for example, struggling areas like the Southern Tier might get even more money while thriving areas like the Capital Region and Long Island might get less.

“If you’re giving out money,” said Friedfel, “you should be giving that out based on need.”

Mayor Bill de Blasio was bombarded with pointed questions from angry public housing tenants Thursday night as he tried to defend his controversial plan to redevelop and partially privatize a Manhattan housing project.

“Unless there’s a huge infusion of money, we’re all screwed, we’ve got to be honest about this,” de Blasio said, struggling to be heard over vocal protestors during a town hall meeting at the Bayard Rustin Educational Complex on West 18th Street.

“There’s no magical money out there.”

Even in the best-case scenario, that sum would still fall $14 billion short of paying for the $38 billion in maintenance, repairs and upgrades NYCHA needs over the same time span.

And things have not been going according to plan thanks to continued opposition from local politicians, tenants and anti-development activists, the Citizens Budget Commission reported in September.

The New York State Thruway Authority on Thursday proposed its first toll increase in 10 years, including for the new Mario M. Cuomo Bridge over the Hudson River north of New York City.

The proposal, which is subject to public comment, favors drivers who use E-ZPass transponders to pay tolls and maintains a discount for commuters and residents of Rockland and Westchester counties, which the bridge connects. If approved by the authority’s board, the toll increases would take effect in 2021 and 2022.

David Friedfel, director of state studies for the Citizens Budget Commission, a fiscal watchdog group, had projected a higher toll increase would be required to pay for the Cuomo Bridge.

“Over time, the tolls will have to increase further if the additional revenue is the only source of funding for the debt,” Mr. Friedfel said.

Eight lawmakers have co-signed a joint letter addressed to Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Tuesday ahead of the MTA’s vote on its budget to discourage the transportation agency in investing in 500 MTA police officers to thwart low-level infractions at a time when transit crime is down.

“In October of this year, [former] NYPD Commissioner James O’Neill disputed the characterization that subway crime is on the rise noting that ‘overall crime is down,'” said the lawmakers via the letter.

The eight lawmakers, which include State Sens. Julia Salazar (D-Brooklyn), Alessandra Biaggi (D-Bronx), Jessica Ramos (D-East Elmhust), Luis Sepúlveda (D-Bronx) and Michael Gianaris (D-Astoria), as well as U.S. Reps. José Serrano (D-Bronx), Jerry Nadler (Manhattan, Brooklyn) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-Bronx, Jackson Heights) would rather have the funding directed towards improving transit infrastructure.

The proposed MTA police force was estimated to cost the transit agency $56 million, bringing its budget deficit from $740 million to more than $1 billion by 2023, according to The Citizens Budget Commission.

On a recent Wednesday night at PS 33 in Chelsea, Gregory Russ, the new chairperson of the New York City Housing Authority stood in front of a cafeteria audience of NYCHA residents and attempted to explain the plan to fund repairs at the nearby Fulton and Chelsea-Elliot developments. “We want to preserve public housing in a neighborhood that it should be in,” he said.

“Chelsea is transforming.”

Indeed, glass high-rises surround the projects on 9th Avenue. Google’s New York City offices are adjacent. Townhouses on neighboring blocks start at roughly $5 million. But Fulton’s buildings, built between 1962 and 1965, need $214 million by 2027 to bring them to a state of good repair, according to a 2017 estimate. Add in the needs of the Chelsea-Elliot development and the to-do list costs over $317 million.

Projects like the one in Chelsea could make a small but significant dent in the $31.8 billion NYCHA says it needs by 2027. At the adjacent developments, it could bring fully renovated kitchens and bathrooms and non-leaky gas lines. New elevators, heating systems and better landscaped grounds could also be possible.

Since 2012, NYCHA has publicly considered infill development at at least 38 developments. The proposals vary but each involves building some new rentals. Some projects are a mix of market rate and ‘affordable’ apartments, while others are 100 percent affordable. Mostly, the market rate development proposals call for building on parking lots and the bulk of the locations that have been considered are in high rent areas like Chelsea. In total, NYCHA could accommodate more than 58 million square feet of new development, according to an analysis by the Citizens Budget Commission, an organization that supports infill, though it isn’t looking at developing anywhere close to that much.

New York City Health + Hospitals can cut its deficit by up to $1.8 billion annually if it can bring its revenue and expenses in line with other safety net hospitals, according to a Citizens Budget Commission report released Dec. 16.

The report found that NYC Health + Hospital's financial performance lagged other counterparts that also take care of a large proportion of Medicaid patients.

In particular in fiscal years 2015 through 2017, NYC Health and Hospitals had an average operating deficit of nearly $3 billion, or 46 percent of its operating expenses. This compares to other safety net facilities with deficits that average 15 percent of their operating expenses.

The commission also found that most safety net hospitals recovered 77 percent of associated patient care costs from Medicaid insurers, while NYC Health + Hospitals recovered just 53 percent. NYC Health + Hospitals recovered 42 percent from commercial insurers, compared to 90 percent for other safety net insurers.

NYC Health + Hospitals should work to bring its revenues and expenses in line with other safety-net hospitals and push for changes in the way the state distributes money to hospitals that treat the poor and uninsured, so it can lessen its reliance on City Hall.

Those are among the recommendations the Citizens Budget Commission, a nonprofit watchdog group, outlined in a report released today that put the city health system's financial woes in the context of how other facilities in the city have fared.

The CBC report found that H+H's financial performance lagged behind that of private institutions that also care for some of the city's poorest residents in the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens. In fiscal years 2015 to 2017, H+H averaged an operating deficit that represented 46% of its operating expenses, compared with a loss ratio of 15% for safety-net hospitals and a surplus of 9% from large health systems that treat mostly commercially insured patients.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo may be spending much of the new year explaining how he was caught off-guard by a $6.1bn hole looming in his next state budget, caused mostly by rising Medicaid costs.

It’s the largest gap since Cuomo took office. Amid New York’s recovery from recession, he closed a $10bn gap for the 2011-2012 fiscal year with cuts to health care, education and personnel. This shortfall, disclosed in a report last month, occurred during a strong economy as revenue increased. Critics say the third-term Democratic governor should have known better.

The gap represents about 6% of the state’s $102bn portion of a current $175bn budget, including federal aid.

The governor should have anticipated these increased obligations, said Andrew Rein, president of the Citizens Budget Commission, a business-supported fiscal watchdog group. Rein is sceptical that Cuomo can fill the gap without deeper across-the-budget cuts, which would require legislative approval. The CBC warned Cuomo earlier this year that Medicaid costs could spike and couldn’t be permanently papered over by the governor’s recent practice of delaying billion-dollar payments into the next fiscal year. Cost controls instituted by the governor eight years ago have failed to stem recent expense increases, Rein said.

Two factions within Transport Workers Union Local 100 have taken to social media to urge rank-and-file members to vote against the contract reached Dec. 4 between the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the union’s leadership.

The deal, which provides raises of a shade less than 10 percent over four years, was approved by Local 100’s executive board the following day by a 42-to-4 vote with 3 abstentions. The last contract expired on May 16.

There will, however, be $100 emergency-room co-pays as an incentive for workers to instead seek treatment from primary-care physicians or clinics, and hikes in prescription-drug co-pays meant to encourage workers to purchase generic equivalents.

According to the Citizens Budget Commission, over the past 15 years, wage growth of the MTA’s union workforce has outpaced other public-sector workers. The business-funded fiscal watchdog reported in April that since June 2005, TWU wage rates have risen 40 percent. That’s a greater rate of increase than the city Sanitation workers and state workers represented by the Civil Service Employees Association, Public Employees Federation and the New York State Troopers Benevolent Association, the CBC said.

New York’s top financial officer called Friday for the state to set hundreds of millions more dollars aside in case of a financial downturn.

The state should fully fund its rainy day reserves within five years, Democratic Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said in a report released Friday.

The economy is booming, but the comptroller said in an interview that New York must be better prepared for economic trouble.

DiNapoli said New York’s reserves are low compared with states like California, which has $17.8 billion in reserves, and Texas, which has $11.8 billion. Another fiscally conservative group, the Citizens Budget Commission, has called for New York to follow California’s lead to help ensure a recession wouldn’t lead to tax hikes or drastic cuts.

“Our analysis has shown a recession is likely to cause a revenue loss of around $35 billion over three years,” said David Friedfel, director of state studies.

"Mandatory debarment is bad policy," reads the message above the signatures of leaders of Reinvent Albany, the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, the Citizens Budget Commission, TransitCenter, the Riders Alliance and the Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee to the MTA. "Contractors are reasonably not willing to take on the risks associated with working with the MTA, as there are factors in delivering projects that are not wholly within their control."

If New York is going to meet its carbon-cutting goals, it should consider its nuclear options, a fiscal watchdog argued in a report released Monday.

In its new white paper, entitled "Getting Greener: Cost-Effective Options for Achieving New York State’s Greenhouse Gas Goals," the Citizens Budget Commission attributed the 13% emissions drop New York State witnessed between 1990 and 2016 to increased utilization of natural gas and nuclear power. The think-tank argued that recently passed plans to slash carbon output by an additional 27% by 2030 and 62% by mid-century are impractical if the state only pursues increased solar and wind generation.

In fact, by pushing Westchester's Indian Point to close and possibly not renewing tax incentives for five other fission facilities, the Empire State risks reversing its recent progress, the CBC asserted.

"Elimination of the nuclear fleet will erase nearly all previous emissions gains as that power supply by necessity will likely be replaced in the near-term by natural gas, which produces greater emissions than nuclear power," the report says.