The ferry's Astoria-to-Wall-Street route now includes a stop at the historic manufacturing center.

Amid mounting criticism of public spending for the NYC Ferry, it’s worth noting the city did not pay for the construction of the Brooklyn Navy Yard’s new pier and dock.

The Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corp. and the developers of Navy Yard office building Dock 72 jointly footed the approximately $8 million bill for the ferry facility, Navy Yard President and CEO David Ehrenberg told the Brooklyn Eagle.

The builders of 675,000-square-foot Dock 72 are the Navy Yard, developers Boston Properties and Rudin Management and coworking office provider WeWork.

The Navy Yard is now the ferry’s homeport

A March study by the Citizens Budget Commission says the NYC Ferry is subsidized at $10.73 per ride — an operating subsidy that’s 10 times the size of the New York City transit system’s. Ferry rides are priced at $2.75 just like subway and bus fares.

Four months have passed since Amazon announced it would be ending plans for a second headquarters in Queens, but the lucrative deal is still being criticized.

Good-government groups and lawmakers are now proposing changes to how the state gives out subsidies, seeking greater transparency and a system that would allow the public to track the state's return on investments.

"We haven't done anything to reform this corrupt system of economic development that we're engaged in," said Ron Deutsch, executive director of the Fiscal Policy Institute, a labor-backed think tank.

New York and local governments handed out $10 billion in subsidies last year in order to attract new businesses. That's nearly $1.5 billion more than in 2016, according to a report by the Citizens Budget Commission, a business-backed think tank.

Amazon was promised $3 billion in tax incentives over the course of a decade in exchange for creating at least 25,000 new jobs with an average salary of $150,000.

State lawmakers are looking to fatten pensions of the most recently hired government workers by undoing reforms that were approved to control runaway costs.

The rollback would cost New Yorkers $149 million in retroactive costs dating back to 2012 — when a law pushed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo went into effect.

And it would cost state and local governments a combined $19 million a year.

The legislation would repeal portions of the Tier 6 pensions agreement covering the class of public employees hired after 2012.

In their bill memo, Abbate and Gounardes claim it’s “harder than ever” to recruit workers for direct care like home health aides and those in the medical field.

But David Friedfel of the fiscal watchdog group Citizens Budget Commission argued the bill should be rejected.

“Not only is it a sweetener, it’s retroactive . . . $149 million in retroactive costs and $20 million per year in ongoing costs,” Friedfel said. “Plus, it’s disingenuous to talk about pension reform and then go back and change it when the economy looks good.”

He also said Albany pols shouldn’t pile up additional costs amid “economic headwinds, potential trade wars and only $3 billion in the state’s rainy-day fund.”

Federal prosecutors in New York have opened an investigation into apparent exorbitant overtime pay at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority — the state-operated transit agency responsible for trains, buses, and subways in and around New York City — according to a New York Times report.

Overtime payments rose 16 percent at the MTA last year, representing a $418 million increase in employee payouts, per the Times. The payroll increases were first disclosed last month in a report from the nonprofit, public watchdog group The Empire Center, which collects statewide payroll data on public employees.A study from the Citizens Budget Commission found that system maintenance workers at the Long Island Rail Road are already the least productive of the five largest commuter rail systems in the country. The report found that if railroad maintenance employees could match the productivity of their sister agency, the Metro North, whose employees came in fourth, they could save the MTA $86 milion.

A vulnerability to payroll abuse at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is coming under the scrutiny of federal prosecutors in Manhattan after revelations that some employees were able to claim staggering amounts of overtime last year.

One worker at the Long Island Rail Road, asserting that he logged about 74 hours of overtime every week atop his regular duty, was paid $461,646 last year — more than the combined salaries of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio.

Five years ago, the Long Island Rail Road installed about 120 biometric clocks, which would require employees to sign in with their thumbprints at the start and end of shifts. Despite this, the paper time keeping system remains in use for union workers in the department that maintains tracks, signals, buildings and bridges.

Management feared that insisting on the use of the automated clocks would have “an adverse impact on employee productivity,” according to an internal memo by the transit agency’s inspector general, which was described to The Times.

Maintainers at the railroad have the lowest productivity among maintainers at the five biggest commuter rail lines in the country, according to a report published in April by the Citizens Budget Commission.

As a former chair of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, I am reluctant to comment on or criticize the agency. I know how difficult the job of overseeing the mammoth system is and how easy Monday-morning quarterbacking can be.

However, the MTA and its sprawling transit network now face a pivotal moment in time, and how they handle these challenges will have a lasting impact on the riders who depend on the system, as well as the regional economy the agency serves.

Midnight May 15 marked the expiration of the MTA’s contract with its largest union, Transport Workers Union Local 100, which represents more than half of its workforce.

About 60% of the MTA’s $16 billion operating budget consists of labor costs. In 2018, the MTA spent nearly $3.4 billion on fringe benefits for workers and retirees, with $1.3 billion for health and welfare and $1.45 billion for contributions to defined benefit plans.

Midnight May 15 marked the expiration of the MTA’s contract with its largest union, Transport Workers Union Local 100, which represents more than half of its workforce.

About 60% of the MTA’s $16 billion operating budget consists of labor costs. In 2018, the MTA spent nearly $3.4 billion on fringe benefits for workers and retirees, with $1.3 billion for health and welfare and $1.45 billion for contributions to defined benefit plans.

Mayor Bill de Blasio’s much-touted budget savings program is not what he has made it seem.

After rapidly growing the budget over his first five years in office and resisting calls to find significant efficiencies at city agencies, de Blasio this year instituted his first “program to eliminate the gap,” or PEG, to achieve hundreds of millions of dollars in “savings.” But though the mayor boasted at his executive budget presentation of $916 million in identified savings over the current and next fiscal years -- including $629 million in agency PEG savings -- his budget has little by way of true city agency cuts to existing spending.

The mayor’s latest spending plan, a whopping $92.5 billion executive budget proposal for the 2020 fiscal year, is no exception to his spending growth trend. And as de Blasio touts new savings, fiscal watchdogs are casting doubts and poking holes.

One in particular, Citizens Budget Commission, says city budget officials are misclassifying savings, passing off re-estimated spending and cost shifts as efficiencies at city agencies.

Instituting a targeted PEG for the first time this year, de Blasio required city agencies to make specific spending reductions through various means -- efficiencies, re-estimates of spending and revenue, and service reductions. The mandated PEG, with target amounts for each agency set by the mayor’s budget office, came after years of the administration relying on a Citywide Savings Plan, which had agencies offer voluntary savings, re-estimates, and revenue-raising ideas.

All told, the mayor’s executive budget estimated the $916 million in savings between fiscal years 2019 ($419 millions) and 2020 ($496 million). An analysis by Citizens Budget Commission, a nonprofit fiscal watchdog, of the overall savings plan shows that for 2020 the Mayor’s Office of Management and Budget identified about 62.5% of the savings from what it classified as agency efficiencies.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s budget office is projecting strong revenue figures in the state’s updated financial plan, despite his warnings about the negative ramifications from changes to the federal tax code.

Since 2017, the governor has been making the case that the adoption of a $10,000 cap on state and local tax deductions (SALT) will adversely impact high-tax states, like New York. In January, he blamed the cap for a $2.3 billion revenue shortfall.

This sentiment was echoed by Citizens Budget Commission state studies director David Friedfel.

Friedfel also took note of the governor’s decision to back off a planned $500 million prepayment on the principal of a pension amortization maneuver from the recession. The money was committed in the financial plan accompanying the governor’s budget amendments, but it was missing from the updated version that came out this week.

“There would have been a real benefit to prepaying this cost,” Friedfel said.

Commuters who ride the NYC Ferry generally rave about the service, which costs the same as a subway ride.

"I love it as an option versus the subway just as far as getting this really wonderful experience," said Brooklyn resident Jared White, who rides the ferry with his kids across the East River from their home in Dumbo to their school in lower Manhattan.

But some critics say that a large chunk of the city's money shouldn't be going to a ferry.

The Citizens Budget Commission released a report this year that found the city shells out $10.73 in taxpayer dollars per ferry rider, which is just a little less than the $11.79 passenger subsidy for the MTA's express bus service. The report also found that the ferry serves less rides in a year than the subway serves in a day.

City Hall rammed through its controversial plan to spend $84.5 million purchasing boats from a contractor providing Mayor Bill de Blasio’s signature NYC Ferry service, overriding objections from the city’s top budget budget watchdog over costs, The Post has learned.

The city’s Economic Development Corporation first tried to buy the 19 ferries in December from San Francisco-based Hornblower — the company that operates the NYC Ferry.

But the purchase was temporarily blocked by City Comptroller Scott Stringer, who objected to the ballooning costs of the half-billion dollar system.

And a new study from the Citizens Budget Commission showed the city was shelling out $10.73 per ride to subsidize the service. That’s double the cost of city-run Staten Island Ferry.

“The City’s prudent action was done on behalf of the public that we all serve,” said EDC spokeswoman Stephanie Báez. “We are elated to move forward with the expansion of a transportation system that millions of New Yorkers have long-needed and quickly come to love.”

It appears that 2018 proved a very busy year for Vincenzo Giurbino, a plumber with the New York City Housing Authority.

The 65-year-old city worker’s payroll numbers indicated he put in an average 16-hour day every single day he worked — reaping him more than $300,000 in salary and overtime.

According to data obtained by THE CITY, Giurbino recorded 1,835 hours of overtime on top of the 1,449 hours of regular time NYCHA says he clocked fixing toilets and leaky pipes in public housing in Brooklyn.

And 2019 is expected to be even higher: from January through April, NYCHA spent $39 million on OT. At that rate, the agency will drop a record $117 million by year’s end.

“It’s definitely inefficient,” says Sean Campion, a researcher at the Citizens Budget Commission. “A lot of these things are political responses. A couple of years ago it was a response to an exposé on the backlog of [repair] tickets. Now it’s coming back up again largely driven by the need to make more repairs.”

Last July, a Citizens Budget Commission report noted that the number of some trade workers has diminished in recent years. That forces management to rely “on a small number of higher paid workers, often with high rates of overtime, to clear work orders in a timely fashion.”

Campion of the Citizens Budget Commission notes that NYCHA recently has tried to expand worker hours for maintenance and trade staff through labor negotiations. The goal: to go beyond the traditional 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. weekday-only schedule by creating split shifts and adding hours in the early morning and evening, as well as on weekends.

The results have been mixed: 1,200 caretakers represented by Teamsters Local 237 who do light repairs embraced the expanded hours deal last year. But on Wednesday, 1,000 maintenance workers who do more complex repairs shot it down.

“They’re trying to do this, but they haven’t been able to do the same thing with the skilled trades,” Campion said. “Particularly the plumbers. They are working between on average 600 to 800 hours of OT a year and those numbers are going higher for supervisors. I don’t know how people are getting assigned to those shifts.”

The state wants more people to choose a refund check, rather than the traditional exemption on their school property tax bill.

New York State homeowners have a decision to make, after a change in the School Tax Relief (STAR) program which provides a break on school taxes.

It was quietly sewn into the recently passed state budget, and it's a change you may need to act on, or risk losing money.

If one opts for receiving their STAR as a personal income tax credit in the form of a rebate check, then the benefit would increase by 2% per year. If a property owner decides to stay their current course, their benefit will be “frozen in time” according to David Friedfel, Director of State Studies for Citizens Budget Commission.

There is something to consider, though, before switching to receiving a check in order to slightly increase your benefit.

That is the likelihood that your bank which holds your mortgage (and which collects escrow money to pay taxes) may exclude your STAR discount because it will still have to pay the full amount to the school district.

“Presumably that's what most banks would do and probably should do,” said Friedfel. “So most likely many banks would end up increasing the escrow requirements so people's monthly bills will go up. The net impact is the same, but from a monthly standpoint some taxpayers will have to account for that in their monthly spending."