In Part 1 of his weekly "Mondays with the Mayor" interview on NY1, Mayor de Blasio joined Errol Louis to discuss the $93 billion city budget deal and what the new rent laws in Albany means for New Yorkers.

hat will taxpayers get for the growing budget? More social workers in schools, senior housing, and spending for libraries.

Five years ago, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced the parameters of his first New York City budget, weighing in at $75 billion.

With each successive budget, Mr. de Blasio and City Council leaders have spent more taxpayer money, hiring more workers and increasing city services, and this year is no different: The budget for the 2019-20 fiscal year, which begins July 1, weighs in at $92.8 billion.

Mr. Johnson pointed out that spending growth was fed by increases in revenues, and added that personal income tax collections this year were higher than expected.

But Andrew Rein, the president of the Citizens Budget Commission, a nonpartisan fiscal monitor, said that while they were some “prudent actions” in the budget, the city’s strong economy and the increased revenue that derives from it represented a “missed opportunity.”

“What they should be doing with the additional revenues and a lot of this growth is putting it in reserves,” Mr. Rein said. The commission estimates that a recession would reduce revenues by as much as $20 billion over three years, a number that dwarfs the city’s reserves.

The de Blasio administration and the City Council reached a handshake deal Friday on a $92.8 billion budget for the upcoming year with an accord that continues a steady increase in spending since the mayor's first year in office — despite a likely economic downturn on the horizon.

The mayor said at a City Hall press conference that the deal was forged with the dual goals of investing in needed programs while maintaining a realism about economic challenges.

"Those two concepts were brought together to create this budget," de Blasio said Friday afternoon.

Budget watchdogs such as the Citizens Budget Commission praised the savings element of the budget, but noted that new spending also grew. And observers such as Republican Council Member Steven Matteo noted that, as economic activity went up over the course of the last decade, the city could have let taxpayers keep more of the spoils.

New York City’s mayor and council struck an agreement on a $92.8 billion budget for the 2020 fiscal year that increases the government’s reserves and boosts spending for school social workers, senior housing, and pre-kindergarten teachers.

The budget, $300 million more than the plan proposed by Mayor Bill de Blasio in April, includes funding to place 200 social workers in public schools and adds $275 million over the next three fiscal years to create 800 affordable homes for seniors.

One big issue that held up an agreement included a council demand that the mayor increase “rainy day’’ reserves by $250 million. Comptroller Scott Stringer and business-backed watchdog, the Citizens Budget Commission, also urged him to stash more money away. De Blasio acquiesced and reserves will grow to a record $5.7 billion.

Spending blueprint is $3.65 billion more than the current fiscal year’s $89.15 billion budget

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and the City Council on Friday agreed on a record $92.8 billion budget, which includes funding for more social workers in schools and additional money for parks and cultural institutions.

The agreement came after two months of the council wrangling between City Hall and the council for more funding for certain services. The budget for fiscal year 2020 was $300 million more than the mayor’s budget proposal, which was released in April. Mr. de Blasio, a Democrat, said at the announcement of the accord that, while the amount rose, the city had also put away more money in its reserves and identified additional savings.

The budget also adds more money for cultural institutions and other services used by many New Yorkers.

Good government group Citizens Budget Commission said the new spending commitments beyond the mayor’s budget proposal are larger than what’s being put into reserves and recommended the city save more money.

“The most prudent course of action would have been to place the vast majority of these new resources in reserve; however, most of the funds were dedicated to service expansion and new spending initiatives,” Andrew S. Ren, the president of the Citizens Budget Commission, said in a statement.

After a nine months-long process of public hearings, private meetings, and spirited discussion, the 2019 Charter Revision Commission approved 17 proposals for the November ballot on Wednesday evening.

Commission staff will draft ballot language for these proposals and the commission will take a final vote to approve the proposals on July 24. It will have one more meeting - on Tuesday, June 18 - to discuss adding other proposals to the list.

Potential changes to the city’s central governing laws and constitution -- the city Charter -- the proposals include items like ranked-choice voting, bolstering police oversight, and city budget reform. Most of the proposals chosen by the 15 commissioners were based off the preliminary staff report released in April, which narrowed considerations after a series of commission meetings. Following the report’s release, the commission held a final round of public hearings, one in each borough, as well as private deliberations before Wednesday night’s public vote by the commissioners at City Hall.

The commission approved proposing to voters the creation of a mandatory “Rainy Day Fund” for city budgeting, where the city government can put surplus revenues when the economy is booming and draw down savings when in a crisis or significant downturn.

The idea behind the fund, strongly recommended by entities like the nonprofit Citizens Budget Commission, is that in cases of major economic hardship, service cuts and tax increases are avoided. This proposal would be reliant on the expiration, repeal, or amendment of the State Financial Emergency Act, which, since the city’s fiscal crisis of the 1970s, is a state law governing city budgeting practices.

Voters would approve the creation of a Rainy Day Fund with certain specific criteria, but it would only be created if state law was amended to allow it.

Charter Commissioner Stephen Fiala, who said this proposal was his top priority on the commission, said it is important because it protects lower- and middle-class people, as they are typically impacted the most by city service cuts and tax increases.

“If there was nothing else that we did, this is the most important thing we will have done. And it isn’t about numbers...,” said Fiala, who was appointed to the commission by Staten Island Borough President James Oddo. “This is really about the poorest of the poor and the middle class because they are the ones who have – from the time we started having recessions until now – they’re the ones who always suffer.”

“By putting a Rainy Day Fund on the ballot, the charter commission would provide New Yorkers with an important opportunity to strengthen one of the few flaws in the city’s budgeting processes and would create significant momentum for the changes needed in state law,” Andrew Rein, president of Citizens Budget Commission, wrote in a June 10 op-ed at Gotham Gazette.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo using spending bill as leverage in hopes of enticing legislators to negotiate on a series of issues.

A bill to authorize millions of dollars in capital spending is simmering on the back burner as New York state lawmakers discuss legalizing marijuana, giving driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants and other issues in the final week of their annual session.

It is an unusual twist for June, because spending matters usually are settled when the budget is adopted by April 1. But a $175.5 billion budget was approved this year without allocating significant new money for capital projects, which could include infrastructure upgrades or economic-development spending.

Now, Gov. Andrew Cuomo is holding back the introduction of the capital-spending bill, hoping to entice legislators to negotiate on a series of issues.

The Citizens Budget Commission, a nonpartisan fiscal watchdog, said the state should be wary of approving capital projects outside of the budget process.

“Absent an emergency, state spending should be allocated during the budget process, when state leaders can adequately consider priorities and trade-offs,” David Friedfel, the organization’s director of state studies, wrote in a recent blog post. “It is not justifiable to add more debt to fund pork-barrel spending.”

The tide was high at a Coney Island meeting on June 11, in which city officials presented their plans to examine the proposed landing locations of the Coney Island ferry, scheduled to set sail in 2021.

The NYC Economic Development Corporation — the quasi government agency overseeing the ferry system — has set its sights on two potential landing spots on Coney Island Creek, one on 31st Street and Bayview Avenue, and another on 29th Street and Neptune Avenue.

The ferry will stop at Bay Ridge, and Wall Street as well, shaving about 30 minutes off the Coney Island-Manhattan commute, according to the NYC Ferry website.

Ultimately, some residents questioned whether the ferry will benefit local Coney Islanders, arguing that tourists may dominate the service, taking advantage of tax payer dollars. After all, the ferry line carries a hefty price tag: according to the Citizens Budget Commission, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization, each ferry ticket will require a $24.75 subsidy from the city.

Analysis hints at a policy conundrum lawmakers face as they consider changes to rules expiring June 15

The biggest beneficiaries of rent regulation in New York aren’t low-income tenants across New York City, but more affluent, white residents of Manhattan, an analysis by The Wall Street Journal found.

These Manhattan renters get a steep discount from market rents in the same neighborhood: about $1,000 a month per apartment, up to nearly $2,000 a month in Manhattan’s Upper West Side. In many less affluent working-class neighborhoods, regulated rents are no different than, or only slightly below, market rate rents in the same locale, providing little direct benefits to tenants, an analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data shows.

The analysis suggests a policy conundrum that may surface as the leaders of the New York state Legislature push a package of bills to strengthen rent laws to protect tenants: Changing some provisions could disproportionately help wealthy renters.

Tenant groups say New York City’s rent-stabilization system disproportionately benefits lower-income people, who make up the largest share of renters protected by rent rules, not the wealthy.

But building owners and the Citizens Budget Commission, a civic watchdog group, say that the program should be specifically targeted at the poor.

The Cuomo administration has made it a goal to keep state spending increases below two percent. David Friedfel, Director of State Studies at the Citizens Budget Commission, explained the findings of his research into whether that goal was met this cycle.

It’s Christmas in June up in Albany — that time of year when lawmakers hand out taxpayer-funded goodies to friends and political allies.

On Thursday, the Citizens Budget Commission cited six new bills to provide grants, tax breaks or other public subsidies to assorted lucky recipients — in the name of “economic development.”

That brings the total number of such bills now in play to 67. Many won’t become law, but any that do will send yet more taxpayer funds down the drain. How much more? Gee: The bills don’t specify.

Gov. Cuomo, as The Post has reported, pumped a whopping $10 billion into his “Andy Land” economic-development programs through last year, with barely any return on that investment.

Some $15 million went for a “film hub” near Syracuse that sold for $1; $90 million for a lightbulb factory that failed to materialize; $750 million for just one now-struggling Buffalo solar-panel factory that stands little chance of repaying the money, let alone generating the “economic activity” to justify it.

But foolish investing is pretty much the point of the “economic development” game. Consider the one bill on the CBC’s list that has passed both the Assembly and the Senate: It increases the cap on individual grants for Entrepreneurship Assistance Centers from $75,000 to $175,000 — even as it reduces the program’s reporting requirements.

Adding another 59 bills to its list of “pension sweeteners” now on the table in Albany, bringing the total to a whopping 189, the Citizens Budget Commission gently notes, “none of these sweeteners should be adopted.”

In fact, it’s beyond shameful that so many legislators push these giveaways — basically handing cash to government employees at the public’s expense.

Sweeteners enhance pension or other benefits for members of a given union. Every year brings dozens of new ones, some of which pass both the Assembly and Senate — mostly to be vetoed by the governor.

But the unions and their politician pals keep it up, since it costs them nothing to play this lottery — and sometimes they score.