Ever interested in passing legislation that sounds good in a press release, rarely caring about how such laws get implemented in practice: That’s your city government.

A new Citizens Budget Commission report shows city spending on leases of private space grew an astonishing 40% from fiscal years 2014 to 2018. The 22 million square feet in privately owned space the city pays for will cost it — er, us — $1.2 billion this fiscal year.

City officials could figure out where they’re wasting space in order to cut costs if only they had complete records of all the space they’re using. The Bloomberg administration tracked those details; under de Blasio, tracking lapsed. In 2017, city officials announced a new task force would be assembled and a custom database built to systematically keep tabs on the real estate portfolio.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, progress has not been swift. Just 3 million of the city’s estimated 37 million-square-foot portfolio has been cataloged. Natch, city spending keeps going up.

City spending on leased space for offices and public facilities is rising faster than the overall city budget, according to a new report from the Citizens Budget Commission.

New York City lease costs rose 40 percent between fiscal years 2014 and 2018 — double the increase in the city budget over that period, the report said. Asking rents for office space only rose 12 percent during those years, and the number of full-time city employees saw a 10 percent increase, per the report.

The report noted the Department of Citywide Administrative Services — which oversees the city's estimated 37 million-square-foot real estate portfolio — has launched initiatives in recent years to improve its management of city leases, such as re-measuring leased spaces and publishing new space utilization criteria.

But "implementation has moved slowly, and efforts to reduce spending and use space more efficiently have been limited," the report states. "The initiatives' initially modest savings targets have been cut in half, and the savings program lacks targets and metrics to assess progress."

The city’s cost to lease space for public facilities and offices are growing faster than the city budget and needs to be reined in through stronger monitoring, a watchdog warns.

The city spent more than $1.1 billion on leased space last year and owes $9.7 billion in future lease obligations, according to the report from the Citizens Budget Commission. The city’s spending on leased space has climbed 40% since 2014, the report found, outpacing 20% growth of the city’s overall budget and average office rental prices in the city.

The city leases from private owners about 22 million square feet out of its 37 million-square-foot real estate portfolio. That square footage mostly comprises offices used by city agencies, but also includes schools, day-care center, warehouses, tow-pounds and courts. The city's most expensive lease, according to the report, if for a Human Resource Administration office at 4 World Trade Center. The pricey 581,000 square foot lease that was scrutinized after first being reported by the Daily News in 2014.

n the public conversation surrounding quality of life in New York City, litter baskets -- the mostly green, metal-wire trash cans standing guard on street corners throughout the five boroughs -- have taken on a unique focus. They seem to exist at the nexus between public and private life, providing relief for the refuse-laden pedestrian, and serving as a symbol of the urban order embodied in mundane municipal service delivery.

Where baskets are placed, how often they are serviced, and how the city enforces the laws around their use all impact the cleanliness of streets and the perception that city government can, or can’t, handle the demands of the people it serves. In today's world, when litter baskets overflow and the dirty laundry is aired on social media, a sense of disorder and uncleanliness can spread, a feeling that local government is not effectively serving the density of residents, commuters, and tourists that fuel the city.

The pall that the Amazon episode cast over economic development in the city has been palpable in the early conversations about what will take the e-tailer's place. In recent weeks the EDC has reached out to local elected officials and the community board in Long Island City to explore rebooting a more than 1.5 million-square-foot innovation center that it had been planning along the riverfront prior to inking the Amazon deal. It could create a home for thousands of jobs. As part of the talks, the EDC also is exploring plans for mixed-use projects on two neighboring parcels. Politico first reported that the EDC was reviving development of what was to have been the Amazon site.

Despite being one of the world's most valuable companies, Amazon was set to receive nearly $400 million in property-tax breaks through the city's Industrial and Commercial Abatement Program, according to the Citizens Budget Commission. Former EDC officials and other experts have urged the agency for years to reevaluate that program. Yet a boundary commission—a group controlled by the mayor that makes recommendations for adjusting the incentive—last met in 2015.

Citizens Budget Commission urges city to rein in leasing costs that have risen to more than $1 billion a year

New York City spends more than $1 billion leasing office space each year, a number that has grown significantly since Mayor Bill de Blasio took office

Despite the city’s efforts to shrink cubicle space and save money on rent, a new report by an independent watchdog says the city needs to rein in costs more quickly.

The report, released Wednesday by the Citizens Budget Commission, looks at the city’s office space for its more than 350,000 municipal employees. The city leases 22 million square feet of space. It owns another 15 million square feet, the report says.

This year the city is spending $1.1 billion to rent office space, according to the report. By next year, that number is expected to grow to $1.2 billion, despite efforts to save money on offices, the report says.

Citizens Budget Commission, a New York-based fiscal think tank and nonprofit, said in a report that the opportunity zone programs could cost New York state $63 million and New York City $31 million in deferred revenue in the 2019 fiscal year. That’s compared with $7 million per year that New York had estimated federal tax conformity to the program would cost back in January 2018, the report said.

The report examines the impact of opportunity zones in New York state and New York City and notes problems policymakers should be concerned about. Specifically, New York's opportunity zone program may only subsidize investments that would have happened anyway, the results from the program aren't being thoroughly tracked and the zone designations will remain fixed until 2026, the report said.

Because of those issues, state policymakers consider improving the program by requiring more public reporting of data related to the program and consider partially or fully decoupling from the federal opportunity zone law, the report said.

Sean Campion, a senior research associate with the CBC and author of the report, told Law360 that a big takeaway from his report is that without data, transparency and accountability, it's hard to know whether state conformity to the federal opportunity zones makes sense going forward.

“We just need more transparency and accountability to make that this economic development expenditure makes sense for New York state to conform to, and if it doesn’t, we need to have the data to make sure it makes sense to opt out,” Campion said.

Though Anglin’s portfolio includes a wide range of departments, both internal- and external-facing, addressing New Yorkers’ “quality of life” has been one of her primary tasks. She is responsible for overseeing the Department of Administrative Citywide Services, the Mayor’s Office of Contract Services, the Department of Finance, and the city’s information technology. The Department of Transportation, Taxi & Limousine Commission, Fire Department, emergency management, and the Department of Sanitation fall under her purview as well.

“One of the things the mayor has asked me to do is to really...look at quality-of-life issues from the resident perspective...using the survey data that [Citizens Budget Commission] has pulled together, as well as data from 311, Twitter, other social media,” Anglin said last year on the What’s the Data Point? podcast from Gotham Gazette and Citizens Budget Commission.

Anglin was referring to a survey of city residents conducted by CBC in 2017 to gauge public perception on the quality of city life and government services. Among other things, the survey generally expresses what the proliferation of sanitation-related images on social media reflect: New Yorkers, in many cases, are not satisfied with conditions on the street.

According to CBC’s data, residents have pointed to noise and sanitation as among the greatest areas of dissatisfaction in the city and de Blasio seems to have taken heed of those complaints.

When Anglin was named deputy mayor in January 2018, one of her main tasks was street cleanliness, she said in the October interview. “That’s a big thing we’re focused on here in the city and one of the things that I will be focusing on even more,” she said.

A signature Trump administration program represents a major opportunity for New York investors—and a fiscal risk for state and city governments—according to a new report by a watchdog group.

The "Opportunity Zones" initiative established under President Donald Trump's 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act allows individuals and corporations to defer capital gains taxes by sinking these earnings into special funds, which in turn allocate the money to projects in designated hard-up Census tracts. The investors must maintain their stakes in these ventures for at least a decade, but all dividends that accrue to their equity during that period are exempt from capital gains taxes. By itself, the Citizens Budget Commission argued in a report released Tuesday, this could deprive Washington of $2 billion in revenue every year.

But because New York accounts for 14% of all capital gains in the country, and because city and state levies treat these earnings like regular income, Gov. Andrew Cuomo's decision to embrace Opportunity Zones and reciprocate their tax benefits could blow holes in Albany and City Hall's budgets as well.

The potential lost receipts could come to $63 million a year for the state and $31 million for New York City up until 2029—when the losses will shoot even higher as the earliest Opportunity Zone shareholders begin to cash out.

ames Merriman has been involved in the charter school movement in New York since its inception 20 years ago, first as the general counsel for the Charter Schools Institute and now, for the last 12 years, as CEO of the New York City Charter School Center, a leading charter school advocacy and resource group.

“My parents were both professors. I thought I was going to be a professor. It’s all anybody did in my house,” Merriman said in a recent interview. “And the notion of being involved in education and giving all children the ability to participate fully in our civic, political, and economic life is very important to me. It was then, and it’s what still motivates me today.”

Reflecting on the two-decade charter school movement in New York, Merriman said that originally the schools were to be “labs of innovations,” but have expanded beyond that as they succeeded, and now form a “parallel alternative” to the traditional public school system in the city. Merriman discussed the sector’s trajectory, reasons he believes New York City charter schools have been successful, and how the schools can and should improve during an appearance on the latest episode of the What’s the [Data] Point? podcast from Gotham Gazette and Citizens Budget Commission.

Merriman said at first the charter school movement was so “upstart” and “revolutionary” that at the time he did not think they would grow beyond that.

The final details have been worked out this week to restore some of state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli's oversight powers.

The deal with Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo gives the comptroller's office preemptive review of contracts initiated by the state and city university systems worth at least $250,000 and Office of General Services centralized contracts worth at least $85,000. All inspections need to be completed within 30 days or the contracts automatically take effect.

The government watchdog Reinvent Albany welcomed Friday's news, which they described as a "clear step forward (that) increases public accountability."

"We hope momentum from completing this voluntary agreement continues and the governor and comptroller work together to pass a law in the 2020 session making the agreement permanent," Reinvent Albany said in a statement.

This sentiment was echoed by Citizens Budget Commission Director of State Studies David Friedfel, though he warned the governor's ability to terminate the authority "may undermine" the deal.

It was legislative action spearheaded by Cuomo in 2011 and 2012 that removed the comptroller's pre-audit review of SUNY, CUNY and OGS contracts.

A decade ago, New York began a long climb out of a deep recession. Today, fiscal watchdogs say the state is not completely ready to handle the next one.

The result is modest budget gaps if economic conditions hold up. But that may not be the case. And David Friedfel of the Citizens Budget Commission notes New York's so-called rainy day fund -- a savings account meant to plug revenue holes -- would struggle to cover the lost revenue.

“The state only has about $2.5 billion in their rainy day reserves and that's if they make the anticipated deposits at the end of this current fiscal year,” said Friedfel. “The impact of a recession over three years would be about $34 billion. So they have less than 10-percent of what they would need to plug that gap over three years.”

When the last recession hit a decade ago, state lawmakers and then-Gov. David Paterson agreed to a tax increase on upper income earners. The tax was meant to be temporary. Further raising taxes on the rich remains an option, but could be tricky.

“Potentially they could, but that would hurt the state's competitiveness,” said Friedfel. “That's an issue the governor has highlighted, particularly with the cap on state and local tax deduction to make New York even less competitive compared to low or no tax states like Florida.”