The city's plan to cut medical costs for union members makes sense, according to the Citizen's Budget Commission.

The Municipal Labor Committee, representing roughly 100 public-employee unions, announced a deal with Mayor Bill de Blasio's administration that the two parties claim will spare taxpayers $1.5 billion in medical expenses during the next three years. Most of the savings will come from a set a measures intended to encourage workers to seek treatment at freestanding clinics and doctors' offices instead of hospitals, even for involved procedures such as colonoscopies.

Although the announcement was light on details, the Citizens Budget Commission called it "an important and positive development."

The Citizens Budget Commission is advising Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to veto 10 bills dealing with economic development.

The package of bills lessen reporting requirements for the state’s revolving loan fund, expand the commercial production tax credit, creates the micreoenterprise development fund and authorizes a new public awareness campaign, according to the group.

A full breakdown of the legislation is available below.

At several budget hearings earlier this year, New York City Council Speaker Corey Johnson took a hard line on transparency. He insisted that Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration was being less than forthcoming on how money is spent and was hampering the Council’s charter-mandated authority to review and approve the city’s spending plan. To wit, in its official response to the mayor’s preliminary budget in April, the Council proposed adding 123 new units of appropriation -- budget lines that explain expenditures -- in order to more clearly and specifically show what the city is spending money on.

Maria Doulis, vice president of Citizens Budget Commission, an independent fiscal watchdog that advocates for increased budget transparency, among other changes, said the Council’s push for transparency likely fell by the wayside as it negotiated larger priorities such as discounted MetroCards for low-income New Yorkers.

City Planning Commission Chairwoman Marisa Lago said Tuesday that modernizing zoning in Soho was on the commission's 'priority list' at a Citizens Budget Commission event. 'If there is one thing that everybody agrees on, it's that the current zoning in Soho, Noho is broken. It just doesn't work,' Lago said during the question-and-answer portion of the talk. But rezoning Soho would be an uphill climb, she said, because of the 'wide array of views' people have in the area about what a rezoning would entail. 'I don't kid myself that this is easy sledding, because we have multiple communities there,' she said. 'We have large retailers. ... We have smaller boutique retailers, we have the artists, we have the few remaining manufacturers who generally own their buildings. And we have artists and other residents who are there.

In May 2013, a derailment in Connecticut led Metro-North to remake the railroad from the ground up, tearing out tens of thousands of splintered rail ties, replacing stone ballast and ripping out miles of track long past its expiration date.

In the five years since a rush-hour New Haven Line train flew off the rails in Bridgeport after hitting a broken rail joint, overtime hours for maintenance spiked to nearly 600,000 last year from 204,000 in 2012.

Metro-North officials dismiss suggestions that money spent on overtime could be used to keep fares down. Instead they say fare increases are applied across the board at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority — Metro-North's parent agency — and bumps in spending at one agency can be offset by savings at another. The MTA's 2017 budget was $15.5 billion, with about one third or $5 billion going to payroll and another $1.3 billion toward pensions.

Jamison Dague, the co-author of a Citizens Budget Commission report from April on increasing labor costs at the MTA’s commuter rails, is unpersuaded by that kind of logic.

“You could just say, well, this is a small part of the MTA budget, but all of these things add up," Dague said.

Urban planning wonks and other interested parties gathered Tuesday morning for a Citizens Budget Commission trustee breakfast featuring Marisa Lago, the director of the city’s Department of City Planning (DCP) and the chair of the City Planning Commission.

At the event, Lago granted attendees a preview of DCP’s forthcoming “Geography of Jobs” report, due for release later this summer.

“Geography of Jobs” is a product of the Department of City Planning’s first foray into regionalism, led by DCP’s relatively new regional planning unit, launched under former Chair Carl Weisbrod. The report is the product of a collaboration among leaders of cities throughout the metropolitan region, defined by DCP as inclusive of New York City and 31 neighboring counties in Northern New Jersey, Southern Connecticut, the Hudson Valley, and Long Island.

Amid the backslapping and progressive pep rallies Mayor Bill de Blasio and City Council Speaker Corey Johnson held to celebrate the city's new $89 billion budget, one man went unthanked: President Donald Trump.

That was hardly a surprise, given the Democrats' deep antipathy for Trump and constant flaunting of their left-of-center credentials. But it was the federal tax reform the president signed last year that allowed the council to add several hundred million dollars of spending on liberal priorities, such as discounted MetroCards for the poor and summer jobs programs, while increasing the size of de Blasio's April spending plan by only $90 million.

How was that possible? According to a council source, the city saw an astounding $4.3 billion in unanticipated tax revenues for the fiscal year ending June 30, thanks mainly to a bull market on Wall Street and corporations bringing home overseas earnings under the federal law's repatriation provisions. Because the city cannot legally run a surplus, it paid for debt service and other expenditures that it had planned to pay for during the upcoming year. This liberated money in next year's spending plan, which the council approved Thursday.

Only $225 million of the one-time infusion of unexpected cash was allocated to the city's reserves. Budget watchdogs argued that the city should have saved much more of it or put it toward the pension system, which faces massive future obligations to retirees. "When you have a windfall like this, it should be placed in trust or used to pay down long-term liabilities," said Maria Doulis, vice president of the Citizens Budget Commission.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg did that in the mid-2000s, but he tapped the surplus when the Great Recession sent tax revenue plummeting. The economic expansion that followed has allowed de Blasio to build up reserves again—not enough to please budget hawks but more than Gov. Andrew Cuomo has.

A problem that has vexed New York City for years emerged again this week with news that educators who lost their positions but remain on payroll will receive average salary increases of more than 19 percent next week, bringing the cost of paying them this year to $136 million.

The raises go to all teachers, but they will be disproportionately large for those in the Absent Teacher Reserve — a pool of tenured teachers and school staff displaced by budget cuts, school closures, or discipline infractions. Although they are no longer in permanent jobs, they tend to have more seniority, which entitles them to larger compensation bumps.

The Citizens Budget Commission, a watchdog group that published a report on ATR spending this week, hopes its tally of rising costs will add pressure to the city as it turns to negotiate a new teachers contract in the fall. The group’s report urges Mayor Bill de Blasio to find a cheaper solution to a challenge facing school districts across the country: how to ensure that principals aren’t forced to accept teachers simply because they have more experience.

“By offering full pay, raises, step increases, and longevity increases, the ATR provides no incentive for unmotivated or unsuitable teachers to secure new permanent placements,” the report says. “The ATR should be a temporary stop, not an unlimited job guarantee.”

The mayor and the City Council last week agreed on a budget for the next 12 months that spends a lot of money but puts aside some for when the economy—and tax revenue—goes down. Gov. Jerry Brown and the California Legislature last week did the same, using that state's booming economy to increase spending to more than $200 billion next fiscal year but also fully funding a rainy-day account that will have more than $13.5 billion available when hard times arrive.

California learned its lesson during the last recession, when it faced a $27 billion deficit and had to slash spending, defer payments and borrow. Voters later mandated that the state accumulate a rainy-day fund that would reach 10% of general-fund spending, or about 7% of overall spending.

Mayor Bill de Blasio has also been worried about the future. His predecessor, Michael Bloomberg, exhausted reserves during the recession, but de Blasio has rebuilt them to $1.3 billion and put an additional $4.3 billion in a trust earmarked for retiree health benefits that has in the past been used to cover deficits. The total is about 6% of the budget, says the Citizens Budget Commission which helped with the numbers in this piece.

A man Gov. Cuomo once called “the closest thing to a genius I’ve ever worked with” faces trial starting Monday in an alleged bid-rigging scheme tied to costly upstate revitalization efforts.

Former SUNY Polytechnic Institute President Alain Kaloyeros’ trial poses great political risk for Cuomo, who designated Kaloyeros as his point man for $1 billion in economic development projects that the feds charge turned into yet another example of Albany corruption.

The trial may raise another issue: Just how effective were the Cuomo economic development programs in Buffalo and Syracuse?

A $15 million film studio built by Cor in Syracuse is a notorious failure. A $750 million factory in Buffalo, known as RiverBend, currently has some 600 workers from Panasonic and Tesla. Each job, according to Kaehny, cost taxpayers $1.25 million.

“The more you’re spending on something, the more opportunities for potential malfeasance,” said David Friedfel of the Citizens Budget Commission.

“The state shouldn’t be in the business of building facilities for companies...Building one facility for one company — it’s too targeted,” Friedfel said. “In the end, it seems it’s taxpayers who seem to be losing.”

Despite a high-profile effort by Mayor Bill de Blasio to reduce the number of city teachers without permanent jobs who draw full pay and benefits, the city spent $136 million this school year to keep them on the payroll, according to a study released Thursday.

The unassigned employees are part of a pool known as the Absent Teacher Reserve, and there were 1,202 teachers and other staff in it at the start of the school year, according to the report by the nonpartisan Citizens Budget Commission. Despite buyouts, mandatory placements in schools and a rule that all unassigned teachers must look for permanent posts, there were still 756 teachers in the pool in April.

Like teachers with full-time classroom assignments, those in the pool are entitled to regular pay raises, step increases and longevity increases, providing “no incentive for unmotivated or unsuitable teachers to secure new permanent placements,” the report notes.

The consent decree that New York City has signed with federal prosecutors over problems at the Housing Authority won't have a negative impact on the $89.15 billion Fiscal 2019 budget.

The city has committed to spending at least $2 billion over the next five years under a consent decree signed on Monday with federal prosecutors who have been investigating widespread problems at the New York City Housing Authority.

The Citizen’s Budget Commission weighed in on the pros and cons of the agreement in a series of Tweets.

“The decree acknowledges that in order to effectively address the serious issues it identifies, substantial changes are needed in NYCHA’s organization and management; in its regulatory burdens and procurement and construction restrictions; and in its union workrules and staffing structure,” the CBC Tweeted. “The consent decree could've gone further in giving the monitor direct authority to override or suspend some of regulations, restrictions and staffing agreements in order to remediate the hazards in the quickest, most effective way possible. But still, an important opportunity.”

The budget watchdog also said future of funding needs for the authority are uncertain.

“The decree also provides for additional funding by the City of New York to remediate health and safety issues: an additional $2.2 billion investment over 10 years, which more than doubles the city’s current capital commitment to NYCHA,” the CBC said.

“However, given the enormity of NYCHA’s capital needs — projected to be at least $25 billion— the funding will have a modest overall impact and will not make up for more than a decade of underinvestment. More resources and transformational changes are needed.”