Long Island should have one industrial development agency, not eight, to increase accountability and reduce competition between Nassau and Suffolk counties in attracting businesses, an influential fiscal watchdog said Monday.
The Citizens Budget Commission, a nonpartisan think tank based in Manhattan, said each of the state’s 10 regions should have one IDA. There are now 107 IDAs across the state, and only one region, New York City, has just one IDA.

New York’s extensive system of Industrial Development Agencies and Local Development Corporations is rife with overlapping boundaries and a lack of transparency that is crying for an overhaul, according to a study to be released Monday by the Citizens Budget Commission spending watchdog group.

Pension costs aren’t the only time bomb set to blow up the city’s budget in the years ahead. A new report shows retiree health-care outlays are also on track to explode.
The report, released Wednesday by the Citizens Budget Commission, notes that Gotham is now on the hook for “Other Post-Employment Benefits” (mostly health care) for current and future retired government workers to the tune of $95 billion.

New York City has amassed more than $95 billion in other post-employment obligations without any credible plan to pay it off, according to a report by the watchdog Citizens Budget Commission.
The debt, which continues to rise by roughly $5 billion annually, equals about $30,000 for each city household, said the report, titled “The Price of Promises Made.”

The city’s liability to cover future costs of health benefits to its retirees now stands at $95 billion — and is growing at a rate of $5 billion annually, according to a report Wednesday.
The report by the Citizens Budget Commission notes the Big Apple is the only large city in the United States where taxpayers pick up all medical insurance costs for municipal retirees before they’re eligible for Medicare as well as the tab for Medicare supplemental insurance and Medicare Plan B.

Maria Doulis, vice president of the nonprofit Citizens Budget Commission, echoed that view. “Economic growth at the local level is a tricky thing, because much of it has to do with national and state forces and its really on the margins that local governments can have impact. Nevertheless, the mayor, whoever the mayor is, gets credit when things go well, and gets the blame when things don’t. That’s the way things work.”

[T]he Citizens Budget Commission confirms that the governor has already begun exceeding that 2 percent cap, though he hides it via sneaky budget tricks.

New York City falls far at the generous end of the spectrum in its health care benefits. The largest city in the country has historically not asked employees for any contributions to health care premiums. One reason for this, says Carol Kellerman, president of the Citizen’s Budget Commission, is that “the public employee labor unions are very powerful in New York City and they are very influential. They’ve made this an extremely important item.”

Instead of increasing spending on maintenance, Mr. Cuomo’s critics say he is focused too much on ribbon-cutting projects like extending the Second Avenue line and adding track to the Long Island Rail Road.
 
Jamison Dague, director of infrastructure studies at the Citizens Budget Commission, a nonpartisan watchdog group, said the addition of these projects in a recent amendment to the agency’s five-year spending plan showed “a misprioritization” of capital funds.

Critics of the governor’s economic-development spending have for years been trying to shine a spotlight on the lack of results. The Citizens Budget Commission has been at the forefront of the effort with a series of reports including this one from April and another in June.

“The sites that are available we’ve had a near maniacal focus on making sure that we know where they are and that we are putting them to good use,” said HPD Commissioner Torres-Spring in an interview on What’s the [Data] Point?, a podcast from Gotham Gazette and Citizens Budget Commission.

Even when economic development deals produce jobs, the question remains: How much of that activity would have occurred anyway without taxpayer dollars? The Citizens Budget Commission has called for an overhaul of the state’s economic development program, citing research by senior economist Timothy Bartik at the Upjohn Institute for Employment Research that described New York’s programs as the costliest in the nation.