The state’s school tax rebates appear to be going out relatively quickly this year.

About 350,000 New Yorkers have received Property Tax Relief Credit checks in the past three weeks, according to the state Department of Taxation and Finance.

“The fact that it’s done this way raises some eyebrows,” said David Friedfel, director of state studies for the Citizens Budget Commission, a fiscal watchdog group.

State officials have noted that sending out the checks this time of year can help people pay their school taxes, which are typically due in September. Still, Friedfel noted that most people with mortgages have their school taxes collected through escrow accounts that are part of their monthly mortgage payments.

Public housing apartments in New York City are in far worse condition than nonpublic housing — and have remained in a deteriorated state over the past four years — while private-sector units improved, a new study set for release Wednesday has found.

The Citizens Budget Commission analyzed Census Bureau data that looked at the condition of 19,000 city apartments, including 800 NYCHA units, comparing conditions in 2014 with last year.

The NYCHA units remained in poor shape year after year, while the private-sector units steadily improved, the data shows

NYCHA could use a handyman. Apartments in New York City's public housing network have continued to fall apart even as conditions in privately owned homes have improved, a new study shows.

New York City Housing Authority households reported five types of physical deficiencies at higher rates in 2017 than the rest of the city's rentals, according to the Citizens Budget Commission review of U.S. Census data published Wednesday.

Some 28 percent of NYCHA homes reported heating breakdowns last year, up from 24 percent in 2014, and 30 percent reported water leaks, up from 28 percent. More than four in 10 reported broken plaster or peeling paint in both 2014 and 2017, the watchdog group's report shows.

As living conditions in the city's private rental stock improved between 2014 and 2017, several problems within the New York City Housing Authority got worse, according to a report released Wednesday.

The commission crunched data from the latest Housing and Vacancy Survey, which is compiled by the city every three years and offers a look into the makeup and conditions of the city's housing stock. Compared to the last survey in 2014, the results from 2017 showed that tenants in private apartments reported fewer incidents of holes in their floors, heating problems, water leaks and cracks and peeling paint. Residents of NYCHA apartments, however, largely reported the opposite.

"The growing gap in building quality between NYCHA and other rental housing units should deepen the urgency of efforts to improve conditions," the commission's Sean Campion wrote.

State officials, hoping to get property tax relief checks to New York homeowners this year sooner rather than later, are sending the payments weeks earlier in the calendar than they did a year ago.

The checks will average about $350 each, returning some $750 million to the pockets of taxpayers, state officials said.

While getting often unexpected rebate checks may delight some taxpayers, the program represents flawed fiscal policy, argued David Friedfel, director of state studies for the Citizens Budget Commission, a fiscal watchdog group.

"That money could be better used to build reserves or pay for the local governments' share of Medicaid costs," Friedfel said. He said the rebate checks come with both administrative and postage costs that could be avoided.

The MTA is in a death struggle of cutting its budget and reducing service, setting off another round of finger-pointing about who should pay to save the cash-strapped state authority. But securing dedicated funding for mass transit is only half the battle. Here are three reasons why:

The subway’s ongoing ridership decline, which shows no evidence of letting up, means future financial prospects are even more precarious. Last month’s budget update predicted $376 million less fare revenue through 2022. Farebox revenue will drop from 52 to 48 percent of the agency’s operating budget.

And that’s slated to happen when New York’s economy is thriving, at least relatively speaking. “These deficits are basically as large as they’ve been since the last recession,” said Jamison Dague of the Citizens Budget Commission. “This is when the economic is, if not [doing] as well as a couple of years ago, still growing.”

“Strategic investments” account for the 20% increase in spending since New York Mayor Bill de Blasio took office, his budget director said Thursday.

“It’s important to point out where our spending is grown over the course of the administration,” Melanie Hartzog said at a breakfast meeting of the business group Association for a Better New York, at the Hilton Midtown.

Carol Kellermann, president of the watchdog Citizens Budget Commission, called on the city to deepen its reserve tank to buffer against the next downturn.

“If the projections of all the economists are right, things are going to be great through 2022. That’s 151 quarters of economic growth. It’s not going to last that much longer,” said Kellermann. “When we look at all the things going on in the world, something’s got to give.”

New York’s political old guard plainly still doesn’t understand the extent of the city Public Housing Authority’s troubles, or it wouldn’t be griping about Team de Blasio’s tentative efforts to get NYCHA some desperately needed income.

NYCHA faces an astounding $32 billion in capital needs. To translate the Citizen Budget Commission’s recent warning into terms the politicians might understand: The agency is going to need much more radical reforms than this — or the city will start seeing whole housing projects literally rot away.

In a report released July 3, the Citizens Budget Commission said the de Blasio administration has made “limited progress” in turning over valuable land for revenue.

Of the 21 developments planned, just one is complete and five are under construction, according to figures provided by the housing authority.

“NYCHA can take advantage of the underutilized land by allowing housing construction on the properties, commonly referred to as infill development, or by transferring development rights to adjacent property owners through the sale of air rights,” the commission wrote. “To date NYCHA has not sold any air rights, and its execution of planned infill development has been slow.”

The initial plan was slated to generate between $300 million and $600 million over 10 years. The report said current plans would only yield $62 million.

A city watchdog group is calling for evaluations of the city’s labor agreements with New York’s building and construction union network.

The Citizens Budget Commission, a nonprofit civic organization focused on the city and state’s finances, sent a letter to Mayor Bill de Blasio in July requesting the city report on the results of the current Project Labor Agreements, or PLAs, with the Building and Construction Trades Council of Greater New York. The CBC added the city should commission evaluations of four of the current PLAs before the possibility of renewing on December 30, 2018.

Mayor Bill de Blasio is considering a shift in his administration’s housing policy toward 100-percent market-rate buildings on unused land owned by the cash-strapped New York City Housing Authority.

So far, the mayor has been reluctant to allow such developments on NYCHA-owned land for fear that the policy would look too much like privatization. But sources said that given the challenges faced by the housing authority, the mayor is now considering opening the doors for entirely market-rate development, Politico reported.

In a report released last month, the Citizens Budget Commission watchdog group said the mayor’s administration has made “limited progress” in trading valuable land for much-needed revenue.

The city originally planned to generate between $300 million and $600 million over 10 years by allowing development on underutilized NYCHA properties or selling air rights. But so far the policy has only yielded $62 million, according to the Citizens Budget Commission.

At a time when two prominent New York politicians are vying to claim the mantle of progressivism, an ongoing transit crisis of the state’s own making threatens to derail Andrew Cuomo’s and Bill de Blasio’s ambitions. That crisis is regressive at its heart, with the poorest New Yorkers bearing more of the costs of unreliable and deteriorating transit service, and no end in sight to an ongoing feud holding progressive solutions hostage.

Meanwhile, the same old political game continues apace. In mid-July, after another morning subway meltdown, Cuomo went off on the city in a diatribe that’s become all too familiar in recent years. “I offered in the Subway Action Plan 50-50,” he said of a plan to split with the city the $836 million cost for his smoke-and-mirrors plan to begin to save the subway. While waxing poetically on his days as a youth in Queens, where he apparently always split everything in half, Cuomo claimed the city “is supposed to pay by law. I had to go to the legislature to get a law to force the city to pay. They have the full legal obligation. That’s the law.”

But the law is merely a technicality—no matter which budget generates the dollars, New York city residents and taxpayers foot most of the bill for the MTA, a point recently reinforced by the Citizens Budget Commission. In testimony to the City Council last year, the CBC detailed the reality of MTA funding. In addition to over $1 billion in subsidies and contributions that come directly out of the New York City budget, city taxpayers and businesses foot the bill for $3.4 billion of the annual $4.6 billion in regional taxes the MTA collects, and 45 percent of state taxes designed to promote transit investment through New York.