An $840 million deal renewing New York's controversial film and television tax credit for two years was quietly tucked into the state budget last week.

Launched in 2004 as a 10 percent refundable credit on "below the line" production costs with a modest price tag of $25 million, the program has evolved to a $420 million recurring budget commitment for a credit that has tripled in size. It is far and away the state's most expensive tax credit targeted to a specific industry.

The extension was also likely driven by the drawn-out process in which the credit is collected, as productions typically don't reap the benefit of the program until years after filming wraps. David Friedf of the progressive Citizens Budget Commission said the process is tantamount to the state "kicking the can down the road."

"They want to be able to give away more than $420 million a year, so they pull down from future years," Friedfel said.

Will his $200 million Syracuse Surge actually work?

New York City isn’t the only city trying to attract and cultivate tech talent – there’s modern-rustic Austin, Texas, offbeat Portland, Oregon, the potential of Pittsburgh and on and on. The mantle of “Next Hot Tech City” continues to leap from place to place.

The alliterative title of the Syracuse Surge may call to mind the Buffalo Billion, Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s landmark economic development package that hasn’t had stellar economic returns so far, and led to several corruption convictions. While city officials – Walsh included – are unsurprisingly bullish about the surge, some experts are also optimistic, at least at this early stage. David Friedfel, director of state studies at the Citizens Budget Commission, said the Syracuse Surge strategy looks promising.

“The Syracuse Surge brings forward a set of scalable, replicable investments that will serve as the backbone for regionwide transformation.” – Syracuse Mayor Ben Walsh

“One of the things that we found from looking at other places that had been successful (at economic development) was that you really need to focus on larger regional cities. Syracuse certainly fits the bill there,” Friedfel said. “You also need to make a long-term commitment to specific strategic priorities. And looking at Syracuse’s plan, it certainly seems like that’s what their intent is. They’re not trying to go out and get a silver bullet cure, bring in one large employer.”

After weeks of talk about the state’s multi-billion budget deficit and the challenge of closing it while also finding money for countless causes, lawmakers managed to pass a $175.5 billion spending plan by April 1 that avoided nearly all of the dire forecasts for the new fiscal year.

How did that happen? Well, things may not have been quite as bleak as advertised after all. And legislators who were hoping for significant increases in spending on, say, education didn't get their way. The final product may have increased overall spending by about $3.8 billion, but ultimately the budget resembled what Gov. Andrew Cuomo proposed earlier in the year.

“They basically adopted the governor’s budget, when it comes down to it,” the Citizens Budget Commission's David Friedfel told POLITICO.

After more than five years as New York City’s Deputy Mayor for Housing and Economic Development, Alicia Glen recently left City Hall, having spearheaded a major affordable housing plan, efforts to diversify the city economy, and other aspects of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s agenda, which she helped shape.

Glen oversaw the city’s troubled public housing authority, the implementation of a new ferry system, investments into public land to spur business development and the rezoning of East Midtown, and more. In a recent lengthy and wide-ranging interview, she reflected on her work as deputy mayor, the state of the city as she leaves its government, some of the unfinished work she started, and the fact that for an official with her portfolio, much of the legacy will not come to fruition for years.

Appearing on the What’s the [Data] Point? podcast from Citizens Budget Commission and Gotham Gazette, Glen also gave her take on the recently-opened Hudson Yards, what should be done with Rikers Island when the jails there are closed, the fallout from the undoing of the deal to bring Amazon to Queens, whether she might ever run for elected office herself, and more. Glen said that she came to the position with a different background from some of her predecessors in prior administrations, which fit the goals de Blasio had laid out as a candidate, to use the tools of government to fight inequality.

One of the greatest trick Bill de Blasio’s administration ever pulled was convincing New Yorkers that the ferries were a legitimate form of mass transit, worthy of hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer subsidies as the subway and bus system collapsed around them.

Now, after years of hiding spending, costs and ridership demographics behind the frustratingly opaque New York City Economic Development Corporation, rather than tasking the city’s public-facing Department of Transportation with running the boat network, the administration is finally taking heat for the ferry system. A recent report by the Citizens Budget Commission detailed how the ferry subsidies reach nearly $11 per ride and could spike to up to $24 per passenger on future planned routes. The city’s Comptroller Scott Stringer has also recently blocked city spending on boat acquisition, and with policy wonks turning a skeptical eye toward the costly ferries, the future of public spending on a little-used and costly boat network that seems to serve well-off neighborhoods that already have transit service may be in doubt. For this ferry skeptic, it’s a reckoning that can’t come a moment too soon.

There’s no silver bullet to save the upstate economy.

When their hometown comes up in conversation, Buffalonians love to proudly rattle off a list of manufacturing firms that are no longer there and things that made the city important a century ago. Did you know that the modern windshield wiper was invented by Trico Products Corp. in Buffalo? That Larkin Soap Co. was once, while located in Buffalo, the world’s largest soap company? That in 1901 Buffalo hosted the Pan-American Exposition – and it’s where instant coffee was served for the first time and where then-President William McKinley was assassinated? Even those who believe Buffalo is on the upswing tend to lead with its past.

In a more general sense, however, economic policy wonks say company-specific subsidies are less efficient than broader development of public goods that are attractive to companies, like high-quality education, workforce training, infrastructure or cultural amenities. (Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz’s newly unveiled proposal to spend $20 million on high-speed internet in underserved areas could be considered an example of that approach, although it’s more about equity than economic development.) In the manufacturing sector, it’s usually more cost-efficient to build capacity for the whole sector to grow than to assist companies individually. For example, Buffalo Manufacturing Works, a local nonprofit assisted by the Buffalo Billion, provides services, such as consulting on engineering in product development, to small and midsized local manufacturers.

“Unfortunately, the biggest projects aren’t through programs, they’re attempts at reviving a region through a silver bullet,” said David Friedfel, director of state studies at the Citizens Budget Commission. One such failed silver bullet is the film hub in Syracuse, a $14 million facility the state constructed in a suburban office park, which Cuomo claimed would create 350 high-tech jobs but has produced no permanent positions.

Even when such efforts aren’t obvious failures, it’s hard to measure success. “The state does not do a good job of documenting what happens after the award is made,” Friedfel said. “In some cases, it’s awarded and the money doesn’t go out the door because the company changes plans. Data isn’t collected in a systematic way that’s easily accessible.”

Even the most ardent supporters of congestion pricing for New York admit the concept is a work in progress.

Now that congestion pricing is state law, the pressure is on for two organizations that struggle with fast project turnarounds to turn that concept into reality.

Toll pricing, street management, appropriate funding priorities for mass transit and controlling the expected mad scramble for exemptions are all in play.

According to Jamison Dague, director of infrastructure studies for the watchdog Citizens Budget Commission, congestion pricing in London was projected to generate £270 million ($353 million) to support mass transit, but actual net revenues in the first full year were £97 million.

“This was owing partially to the success of reduced traffic, but greater-than-expected evasion and operating costs also ate into revenues for mass transit,” he said.

Incentives for renovations have improved city's housing stock

As some Albany lawmakers rush to blow up rent-regulation laws before they expire this summer, all interested parties would do well to first look at actual housing data. They’d find that our city’s private housing stock has improved by leaps and bounds in the past few decades.

The government-run New York City Housing and Vacancy Survey illuminates the gains by our city’s rental housing since 1978. Apartments in “good or excellent” condition jumped by 20%, New Yorkers living on blocks with boarded-up or broken windows fell by 21%, and deficiencies are now at a record-low 3.6%.

According to the Citizens Budget Commission, between 2016 and 2017 private rental homes saw a decrease in physical deficiencies across every single category measured by the city, including leaks and heating breakdowns. NYCHA-run public housing, meanwhile, saw problems grow in almost every category.

The two-year-old NYC Ferry system faces new questions about fiscal prudence from the New York City Comptroller, who has asked whether the city might do better to take over the privately-operated service itself.

NYC Ferry is operated under contract by Hornblower Cruises, a San Francisco-based passenger vessel company, and administered by the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC). The non-profit Citizens Budget Commission (CBC) recently estimated that the service is subsidized at a rate of about $10.73 per rider - rising to nearly $25 for a planned Coney Island route. "The ferry’s subsidies are high for two reasons: Its operating costs are high due to long routes and seasonal and leisure-oriented ridership, and its revenue is low because its fare is pegged to subway and bus fares," the CBC wrote.

New York has spent about $580 million in total on the ferry operation so far, including capex for dock construction and other related expenses.

The city's ferry system is getting so expensive that it may need a new captain, City Comptroller Scott Stringer said Wednesday. Citing the ballooning price tag for Mayor Bill de Blasio's signature NYC Ferry network, Stringer called for the Department of Transportation to examine whether it could steer the program instead of the Economic Development Corporation.

"The Economic Development Corporation's contract with NYC Ferry operator Hornblower raises serious questions about the exploding costs and liabilities that the City is choosing to absorb, all while handing over millions in revenue to a private contractor — questions that to-date have not been sufficiently answered," Stringer, a Democrat, said in a statement.

Since its launch in May 2017, NYC Ferry has expanded to six routes and carried millions of riders. The EDC oversees the program and handles the contract with Hornblower, the private company that operates the service.

While the ferries have proven popular, they're also expensive — the city subsidizes the service to the tune of $10.73 per trip, nearly twice the rate for the Staten Island Ferry, according to a Citizens Budget Commission report released last week.

Comptroller Scott Stringer is calling on the city to consider taking control of Mayor Bill de Blasio's signature NYC Ferry before costs sail any further.

Stringer called on the city's Department of Transportation to "immediately explore" taking over NYC Ferry. The DOT, he said, already has experience running the 202-year-old Staten Island Ferry and could improve the efficiency of NYC Ferry's six routes.

The statement from the comptroller—a fellow Democrat but political rival to de Blasio—responds to a report that questioned the city subsidies for the ferry service, released last week by the fiscally conservative Citizens Budget Commission. The CBC found that the ferry service costs city taxpayers $10.73 per ride, compared to $1.05 for each subway ride.

The city EDC characterized the NYC Ferry's public price tag as "startup costs" and said the CBC underestimated how much ridership would increase in the next five years. But bad press has piled up for the ferry service since the report. An analysis by the New York Post found that nearly half of NYC Ferry's ridership comes from one line that serves wealthy East River waterfront neighborhoods.

From plastic forks to straws, companies and governments alike are making moves to eliminate single-use plastics whenever possible. But when it comes to plastic bags, habits seem a little bit harder to change. Grocery stores across the country continue to automatically bag food in plastic, and many people have not changed their habits as a result. Others choose canvas tote bags instead and favor reusable options. Have you stopped using plastic bags?

Plastic bags–the kind you might find at a grocery store or local retailer–are not biodegradable, meaning they cannot be decomposed by living organisms. According to ThoughtCo, plastic bags take 1,000 years to break down into smaller particles and can continue to pollute soil and water for years after that.

The state’s ban on disposable plastic grocery bags, forcing residents to pay for paper bags or re-use their own on grocery store visits starting March 2020, would reduce the 71,000 tons in plastic bags used annually just in New York City, according to the Citizens Budget Commission.

But for many, habits are hard to change. Plus, although they’re “single-use,” plastic bags can serve more than one purpose. A plastic bag can go from holding your groceries to holding your lunch, or it can simply sit in your pantry until you need it.