While the new session of the New York state Legislature won’t convene until January, incoming state Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins has indicated one policy she intends to keep in place – the “millionaire’s” tax.

“The millionaire’s tax was supposed to be a temporary surcharge to get the state through a post-recession fiscal crisis,” Kathy Wylde, president of the business-focused Partnership for New York City, told Politico last year. “Albany needs to understand the potential negative impact of a tax rate that is higher than almost any of our domestic and global competitors when it comes to attracting talent and jobs.”

The Citizens Budget Commission, a think tank that promotes fiscal restraint, has also argued that the millionaire’s tax poses a threat to New York’s retention of high earners. “When the millionaire's tax was previously extended, we advocated for the state extending it at a rate below 8.82 percent and reexamining the extension if federal tax changes were enacted,” Maria Doulis, vice president of the Citizens Budget Commision, wrote in an email.

When the federal tax law changed earlier this year, CBC released a report, arguing that the federal Tax Cuts and Jobs Act made New York less competitive against states and cities with lower tax rates, providing another reason to end the higher tax rate for millionaires. “The surcharge should be allowed to expire as planned, supported by accompanying spending reductions,” it read.

The city could more wisely spend the $1.1 billion it costs to provide emergency medical services, a budget watchdog group says, in part by reducing the role fire engines play in responding to 911 calls — and then considering whether it really needs all of its engine companies.

In a new report, the Citizens Budget Commission recommends ultimately reducing the number of engine companies, which for years has been a political nonstarter.

The suggestion comes as the fire department, which is responsible for responding to medical emergencies, has seen a steady uptick in the number of calls — responding to 1.5 million in 2017, up 36% since 2000. At the same time, the number of fires in the city has decreased. But while EMS work makes up 84% of the department’s workload, it accounts for just 30% of its budget, the report’s author, Mariana Alexander, a research associate at the Citizens Budget Commission, said.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has forecast that the cost of a program for disabled residents has contributed to an unexpected $321 million increase in projected costs through 2022, adding to the agency’s budget troubles.

The pilot program, which started last year, allows qualified riders to take taxis instead of specialized vans and buses or private-hire vehicles. It has been hugely popular with paratransit customers taking more than 1.5 million cab rides over the past year.
The rising expense places the MTA in a difficult position as the pilot approaches a spring 2019 conclusion: rein in expenses, possibly by curtailing trips, or finance the added costs.

Meanwhile, the MTA, which has a $17 billion budget, is trying to cut costs by delaying the rollout of new Select Bus Service routes, reducing staffing for fare-evasion patrols on buses and freezing nonessential hiring authoritywide.

The MTA’s budget situation “is already pretty dire,” said Jamison Dague, director of infrastructure studies at the Citizen’s Budget Commission, a watchdog group.

A new breakdown of the Amazon deal concludes that although the city's tech sector and tax revenue will reap considerable benefits, further analysis exposes glaring weaknesses in the the city and state's economic development policy

Amazon’s performance-based Excelsior tax credits will have some input from the state Legislature — giving lawmakers another piece in the agreement for the online web retailer to bring up to 40,000 jobs over 15 years to Long Island City.

The Citizens Budget Commission on Wednesday released a point-by-point explainer for the state’s tax incentive package tied to Amazon bringing the jobs.The agreement stipulates Amazon receives the maximum credits if it employs 25,000 net new full-time workers by the end of June 2028 and maintained through January 2029 that total $1.2 billion.

As the CBC’s report points out, Excelsior benefits are capped at $183 million in 2019 and decrease each year to $36 million in 2024.

“Assuming Amazon meets its job targets, the State Legislature would need to approve an extension of Excelsior that increases the caps,” the report found.

Still, an Albany source notes this is less of a choke point than it would appear. Excelsior job credits also impact other projects that lawmakers likely have an interest in continuing.

There’s a lot more in there and it’s worth reading for a clear explanation of what’s happening.

The de Blasio administration is preparing to overhaul its long-term approach to one of its most intractable problems — the crumbling public housing buildings that more than 400,000 New Yorkers call home.

Officials from City Hall and the New York City Housing Authority, whose vast troubles are at the center of an ongoing federal case, have been briefing elected officials in recent weeks, ahead of unveiling a new 10-year plan to raise at least $22 billion for the agency.

The new plan also calls for the sale of unused development rights, also known as air rights. The Citizens Budget Commission on Thursday submitted testimony to the City Council saying NYCHA controls 58 million square feet of air rights across the city and could raise $1.5 billion by selling 10 percent of them.

The commission also called for the authority to turn over more of its unused land to private developers for market-rate apartments — something Stanley Brezenoff, who chairs NYCHA, has endorsed.

You've heard the big news: Amazon is coming to Queens, opening a new office for an estimated 25,000 workers in Long Island City.

And in return for doing that, New York State and state have promised some serious subsidies and incentives to the company: as much as $3 billion. But what does that money get the city? And what strings are attached?

But David Friedfel, Director of State Studies at the Citizens Budget Commission, told Jami Floyd it's quite hard to make that kind of estimate at this point in the project.

"I'm always trepidatious when I hear numbers regarding return on investment, certainly when they're calculated at this early stage," he said on All Things Considered. "To use them as a justification for spending billions of dollars — it adds additional layers of things to think about."

Amazon stands to get more than $1.5 billion in grants and tax breaks from New York state in exchange for bringing at least 25,000 workers to a new campus in Queens, a record-setting incentive package that was both cheered and jeered Tuesday by elected officials in the city.

"It certainly appears New York is being overwhelmingly generous," said David Friedfel, director of state studies for the Citizens Budget Commission, a nonpartisan state government watchdog group. "And we have a history of providing economic development benefits that don't pan out."

In return for building a large new office complex in a booming neighborhood of Queens, Amazon is set to receive nearly $1.7 billion worth of financial incentives from New York’s state government. But according to Gov. Andrew Cuomo, taxpayers should really consider the deal a freebie.*

What sets Cuomo apart is how aggressively he competes in the game. Under his watch, annual spending on state incentives has risen from $2.9 billion to $4.8 billion per year, for a total of $28.4 billion, according to the nonpartisan Citizens Budget Commission. Much of that money has been channeled into development schemes meant to create a high-tech manufacturing base upstate, where factory jobs have gradually vanished. Cuomo was partly inspired by the growth of computer chip research and manufacturing around Albany, which took root thanks to a large dose of government incentives—an effort that is sometimes held up as an example of successful regional industrial policy. But the results have often been embarrassing or corrupt, leaving the state littered with white elephants.

Rumors of Amazon’s second headquarters being split between New York City and Northern Virginia were confirmed Tuesday in a joint statement from Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio and a release from the company. While details of the incentives package offered by New York continue to emerge, one thing is clear – Amazon will receive most of its tax breaks through the Excelsior Jobs Program.

Amazon will bring what it says will be more than 25,000 new jobs and $2.5 billion in investments when it opens its new headquarters in Long Island City, Queens, but New York won’t reap those benefits without paying a price of its own. The state has offered the company an estimated $1.5 billion in tax breaks, and $1.2 billion of that total will come through the Excelsior Jobs Program.

“The actual cost of Excelsior has been around $160 to $180 million per year,” estimates Riley Edwards, a research associate at the Citizens Budget Commission. The program has a cap of $183 million this year, and is set to decline to $133 million in 2022 and $83 million in 2023. That may become a problem, considering the total of what has been offered to Amazon is much, much more than that.

Joseph Lhota's departure as chair of the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority after last week's election may herald a shift in the government's strategy for funding the nation's largest transit system.

Lhota left the MTA on Friday after serving two terms as the head of the authority, three days after New York voters handed control of the State Senate to Democrats, who retained control of the assembly.

And congestion pricing, in which bridge and road tolls would raise money for transit will be a hot topic in 2019, many observers said.

“Congestion pricing will still face the same issues as before the Senate flipped,” Cure said, pointing out that people in some under-served areas, such in Whitestone in Queens, have few transit options available, so there may have to be some sort of flexibility, such as lower fares or tolls, for certain areas.

“But the MTA needs to have a steady and reliable flow of revenue,” he said. “It’s now up to the governor and the issue needs his leadership on this.”

The Citizens Budget Commission agreed a congestion pricing plan was much needed.

“Funding streams to accelerate the turnaround at the MTA remain a critical issue, and passing a congestion pricing plan should be a top priority for the new Legislature,” said Maria Doulis, a vice president at the budget watchdog. “In addition to funding challenges, the new chairman will have to focus on continued management and construction efficiency and increased productivity among the unionized workforce.”

Amazon built a retail empire on low prices and free shipping. But for taxpayers, its new headquarters didn’t come cheap.

New York and Virginia collectively offered more than $2 billion in tax credits, rebates and other incentives to attract the company. That figure doesn’t include what could amount to hundreds of millions of dollars in infrastructure spending, worker training and other government assistance.

New York’s incentive package is much larger than Virginia’s. Amazon promised to create about 25,000 jobs at each location, but New York offered twice as much as Virginia did.

“That’s the first thing we said,” said Maria Doulis, vice president of the nonpartisan Citizens Budget Commission, which has offices in New York City and Albany. “We’re like, ‘Wait, you’re splitting this down the middle — why does it look like we’re paying so much?’ ”