Mayor Bill de Blasio recently promised to make organic waste collection mandatory, but his latest $92.5 billion budget unveiled last week still doesn't include funding to expand the current voluntary collection program, prompting criticism that the mayor isn't fully committed to the initiative.

De Blasio said at an April 22 press conference that the city would implement a mandatory organic waste collection plan, meaning all residents would be required to separate food waste and yard detritus just like they're currently required to separate plastic and glass materials. De Blasio said the new pledge, unveiled as part of the city's updated OneNYC plan, is "the kind of change we have to make."

The voluntary program has grown under de Blasio, but is still not available in 16 community boards in Staten Island, Queens and Brooklyn.

A citywide curbside organics collection program would require an additional $177 million to $251 million annually, according to a 2016 report by the Citizens Citizens Budget Commission, a fiscal watchdog group.

At least half of Long Island Rail Road workers are earning six-figure salaries — more than any other arm of the MTA, including its own executive headquarters, according to a new watchdog report.

The median pay at the LIRR in 2017 was $104,146 — compared with $90,442 at MTA headquarters and $82,690 at its NYC Transit Authority subsidiary, according to the report from the Citizens Budget Commission released Tuesday.

Meanwhile, the median pay for the MTA’s Metro-North workers was $90,354 — even though the CBC found they’re more productive than their counterparts at the LIRR.

The LIRR uses 10 percent more manpower than the Metro-North lines, based on the number of hours worked versus the hours of operation, the nonprofit group found.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio won praise for cost-cutting in his $92.5 billion budget proposal and criticism from those who said he didn’t go far enough to prepare for an economic downturn.

The Fiscal 2020 executive budget released Thursday was larger than the $92.2 billion proposed in the preliminary 2020 budget unveiled in February and the $89.2 billion final budget for Fiscal 2019 approved last June.

The Citizens Budget Commission said the new plan needed to focus more on preparing for future downturns.

"Mayor de Blasio’s stay-the-course budget does not take the steps needed to preserve services or forestall tax increases in the eventual hard times,” said CBC President Andrew Rein. “City-funded spending increases roughly 3.6%, which is lower than the Administration’s prior average 4.6%. The highly anticipated Program to Eliminate the Gap provides savings, but fails to deliver resources needed to address any upcoming downturn. Its size and components are in line with the Administration’s prior savings programs. A majority of the savings are from expense re-estimates, increased revenues, funding shifts, and debt service savings, rather than from improved efficiency. Credit is due for a reduction in headcount of 1,600 vacant positions on a recurring basis.”

Some city yellow school bus drivers are vowing to strike for seniority, wage and benefit protections — and this time, management is rallying by their side.

Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1181 and Reliant Bus Company are demanding a change in state law to guarantee the protections on city taxpayers’ dime. So is Mayor Bill de Blasio, who promised the aid in his 2013 campaign, only to be thwarted in court.

A strike would affect about 12,000 special-needs children and 910 school bus routes — dangling a threat over students’ families and the lawmakers who represent them in Albany.

— Homeowners, take note: If you don’t switch the way you get your School Tax Relief (STAR) property tax break, it could cost you money.

Starting this fall, those who opt to keep getting their savings as an exemption, or a reduction on their tax bill, rather than as a rebate check won’t benefit from an annual increase in their STAR savings of up to 2 percent. And those with incomes between $250,000 and $500,000 could lose the tax break entirely if they don’t sign up to get the savings in a check rather than taking it off their bill.

Those who earn between $250,000 and $500,00 will be truly angry if their school taxes no longer include STAR savings, which can be $1,000 or more depending on a home’s value.

“I foresee there being a lot of angry taxpayers,” said David Friedfel, Director of State Studies at the Citizens Budget Commission, a spending watchdog group.

Citizens Budget Committee recommends strategies for dually eligible

The Citizens Budget Commission has identified and recommended new strategies to better coordinate care for dually eligible individuals and contain costs for the state.

About 880,000 New Yorkers are enrolled in both Medicaid and Medicare, the commission noted. Though the dually eligible population represents a mere 15% of Medicaid enrollment in the state, it makes up 36% of the program's cost—about $26 billion.

The commission outlined in a report issued Thursday five strategies it believes the state could use to improve care for dually eligible individuals and contain related costs.

The commission first said the state could revitalize positive aspects of Fully Integrated Duals Advantage, including unified enrollment and appeals processes. The state also could build enrollment in its existing Medicaid Advantage and Medicaid Advantage Plus programs.

When New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio first presented his $92.2 billion preliminary budget proposal for the next fiscal year, he framed it as a plan draped in economic uncertainty and called for his administration’s first austerity measures across all agencies to achieve $750 million in savings.

In his executive budget presentation on Thursday, the mayor continued to issue fiscal caution while he outlined a $92.5 billion plan that achieved a higher savings target with a modest increase in spending.

The announcement comes as the Supreme Court weighs whether the government can add a question about citizenship status to the census, a move that advocates say will lead to lack of participation among immigrant communities.

Still, despite logging almost $1 billion in budget cuts, some fiscal watchdogs said they were concerned the plan didn’t go far enough to keep New York City on economically steady ground.

“Mayor de Blasio's stay-the-course budget does not take the steps needed to preserve services or forestall tax increases in the eventual hard times,” said Andrew Rein, president of the Citizens Budget Commission.

In a statement, the City Council also expressed disappointment in the mayor’s executive budget, noting that they provided a budget response that also found nearly a billion dollars in savings and yet few of their budget priorities were included in his plan.

Mayor has increased city budget $13 billion more than if he had just matched inflation

An addiction is a terrible problem, and when it comes to Mayor Bill de Blasio’s penchant for spending it is a terrible problem for New Yorkers.

The executive budget he released Thursday seized on every scrap of good news to increase city spending by $300 million more than he forecast in February and $3.5 billion more than in the current fiscal year, which ends June 30. And the good news is not even that good: The state only cut $300 million rather than $600 million from aid the city expected; income-tax revenues in March bounced back from worrisome declines earlier in the year; and the economy is doing better than many thought a few months ago. All the improvement could disappear overnight.

In addition, the mayor’s claim that agencies reduced spending by $916 million needs to be taken with more than few grains of salt. As the Citizens Budget Commission pointed out, "A majority of the savings are from expense re-estimates, increased revenues, funding shifts and debt-service savings, rather than from improved efficiency." The jump in the 10-year capital spending plan to $117 billion from $104 billion in just four months deserves far more attention than it is getting.

He asked for cuts and city agencies delivered, but still, the savings won't be enough.

"Unfortunately, we met an additional challenge, and that $750 million savings target, although ambitious on its face, proved to be insufficient," Mayor Bill de Blasio said Thursday during a budget briefing at City Hall.

Andrew Rein, president of the Citizens Budget Commission, warned that de Blasio isnt doing enough to prepare.
"He really presented a stay-the course budget, which is not what you need going into what might be potentially rocky times," Rein said. "When you're headed into the storms, you don't hit autopilot. You manage agressively and prepare for those times. And that is not what we see in this budget."

Nearly all of the Council's budget priorities were left out of the mayor's proposal. Council Speaker Corey Johnson issued a statement saying the Council was disappointed and criticizing the mayor for not growing the city's reserves.

THE ISSUE:

The same public entities that hand out tax breaks are asked to fund an anti-reform lobbying effort.

THE STAKES:

These public entities should be working in the public interest, not against it.

Through tax exemptions alone, New York's 109 IDAs allow businesses to forgo paying more than $630 million a year, according to the state comptroller's office — money that other taxpayers have to make up to cover the cost of government. That's part of an estimated $4.2 billion that local governments spend on tax breaks, grants and other incentives, plus another $4.3 billion from the state, according to the Citizens Budget Commission

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio released his $92.5 billion executive budget Thursday amid debate about whether the city’s system for reserves is enough to weather a downtown.

De Blasio, speaking with reporters in the City Hall Blue Room, said the updated fiscal 2020 operating plan features $916 million in savings, exceeding the $750 million he sought from department heads in February under a so-called program to eliminate the gap, or PEG.

"This was an agency-by-agency process," he said. The savings, according to de Blasio, will help fund $150 million in critical needs that have emerged since February. They include special education initiatives, additional mandated charter school costs and a state cut to pre-trial mental health evaluations.

Beyond a possible economic slowdown, uncertainty looms about funding from the state and local governments.

The watchdog Citizens Budget Commission called on the city to establish a dedicated rainy-day fund. According to the CBC, practices city officials adopted to build reserves within legal restrictions are deficient.

If the $92.5 billion budget Mayor Bill de Blasio rolled out Thursday were as prudent as he paints it, New Yorkers could sleep well, knowing the city’s finances are sound. Alas, it’s not even close.

De Blasio rightly fretted over the economic and fiscal “uncertainty” the city faces, not just because aid from DC is, as he put it, “unpredictable,” but also because the economy may be overdue for a slowdown.

He was far less on target in calling his budget “focused on fiscal caution.” For example, de Blasio bragged of saving $2.5 billion since last June. Yet the mayor’s bottom line actually grows by $3.5 billion over the one the city adopted back then.

The Citizens Budget Commission figures city outlays will have ballooned more than 29% under de Blasio, more than four times inflation. A key reason: He’s increased the number of city workers by 12%, to 332,300. Where’s the prudence there?