Champeny said that universities are expected to return value to their communities in exchange for tax breaks. NYU’s growing footprint raises questions as to whether the university is holding up its end of the bargain.

“As their real estate holdings have grown, and the cost of the exemption has increased, there have been more and more concerns that the foregone tax revenue exceeds the value of the benefit that’s being received,” Champeny said.

The Citizens Budget Commission, a nonprofit fiscal watchdog, has several recommendations for the city to alleviate its workforce crisis. “The City has plenty of available positions, and in fact many more than it needs. The current staffing issues faced by some agencies and units are the result of management, procedural, and labor market challenges,” said Ana Champeny, CBC’s vice president for research, in testimony at the September Council hearing.

Champeny said the city should move vacant positions to where they are needed, providing more flexibility in reallocating headcount, improve systems to expedite recruitment and hiring, improve retention, improve reporting on vacancies and modernize civil service and public sector employment with skills training, bonuses, and negotiating flexibility and other work rules changes.

CBC President Andrew Rein said in a phone interview that the city could easily eliminate thousands of vacancies without cutting essential services. “You can eliminate probably half of the vacancies and still hire critical positions…You would still have 10,000 vacancies you can still fill,” he said.

“The challenge here is you need to identify what's critical, put the vacancies in the right places,” he added, “because attrition is a blunt tool.”

“The idea is that there is some additional contribution from these institutions for the services that they’re consuming,” said Ana Champeny, a tax policy researcher at the Citizens Budget Commission. She added that one of New York City’s greatest assets is its population of educated young people.

Champeny said that universities are expected to return value to their communities in exchange for tax breaks. NYU’s growing footprint raises questions as to whether the university is holding up its end of the bargain.

“As their real estate holdings have grown, and the cost of the exemption has increased, there have been more and more concerns that the foregone tax revenue exceeds the value of the benefit that’s being received,” Champeny said.

“It is a prudent move. We have called for them to remove the unnecessary vacancies. The fiscal cliff is real. It’s looming,” said Ana Champeny, vice president for research at the Citizens Budget Commission.

She noted the city workforce has needed a trim ever since it grew under former Mayor Bill de Blasio. By June 2014 — his first year in office — the city workforce stood at 297,349 — but it ballooned to a high of 326,739 in June 2019. The number gradually decreased during his last two years in office and this past June 2022 recorded a total of 304,095 city employees.

“If there’s a recession, the uncertainty with collective bargaining and they’re running out of federal aid, I think it’s important for them to take action now,” said Champeny.

“It’s a good step. Funding vacant positions and unnecessary positions isn’t helping,” said Andrew Rein, president of the Citizens Budget Commission. The watchdog group holds the position that the city should focus on filing critical vacancies and eliminate unnecessary ones. “This starts to give more realism to the budgets,” Rein said.

Asked about the latest spending cuts, City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams expressed some hesitation. “We’re scrutinizing it right now, but the city can’t afford to lose staff in those agencies that really are relied upon to address the multiple crises we’re facing,” she said Tuesday.

New York City Comptroller Brad Lander expressed concern too. “While we agree that savings are critical as New York City faces economic headwinds, confronting those risks cannot come at the expense of diminishing the city’s capacity to get stuff done,” Lander said in a statement on Monday. “Today’s directive to agencies furthers our concerns about recruiting and retaining the staff needed to implement critical programs from traffic safety improvements to processing housing applications.”

Where there’s more widespread agreement is in the opinion that the city needs to step up its hiring efforts for the vacant positions that remain on the books as staffing shortages threaten the delivery of key city services and leave some existing employees overworked. “Allowing agencies to hire for vital positions is crucial,” Rein said. “These hiring systems are sticky. They make it hard to hire, and that needs to be reformed.”

Jiha’s letter includes a policy change that Rein said is a first step to removing some barriers to hiring. The so-called 2 for 1 rule – a policy that generally redistricted departments to hiring one position for every two that are vacated – is being lifted, and the letter said the the Office of Management and Budget is “committed to reviewing and approving new hire requests quickly and efficiently.”

Fiscal watchdogs cheered the decision.

“It is a prudent move. We have called for them to remove the unnecessary vacancies. The fiscal cliff is real. It’s looming,” said Ana Champeny, vice president for research at the Citizens Budget Commission.

She noted the city workforce has needed a trim ever since it grew under former Mayor Bill de Blasio. By June 2014 — his first year in office — the city workforce stood at 297,349 — but it ballooned to a high of 326,739 in June 2019. The number gradually decreased during his last two years in office and this past June 2022 recorded a total of 304,095 city employees.

“If there’s a recession, the uncertainty with collective bargaining and they’re running out of federal aid, I think it’s important for them to take action now,” said Champeny.

“It’s a good step. Funding vacant positions and unnecessary positions isn’t helping,” said Andrew Rein, president of the Citizens Budget Commission. The watchdog group holds the position that the city should focus on filing critical vacancies and eliminate unnecessary ones. “This starts to give more realism to the budgets,” Rein said.

Asked about the latest spending cuts, City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams expressed some hesitation. “We’re scrutinizing it right now, but the city can’t afford to lose staff in those agencies that really are relied upon to address the multiple crises we’re facing,” she said Tuesday.

New York City Comptroller Brad Lander expressed concern too. “While we agree that savings are critical as New York City faces economic headwinds, confronting those risks cannot come at the expense of diminishing the city’s capacity to get stuff done,” Lander said in a statement on Monday. “Today’s directive to agencies furthers our concerns about recruiting and retaining the staff needed to implement critical programs from traffic safety improvements to processing housing applications.”

Where there’s more widespread agreement is in the opinion that the city needs to step up its hiring efforts for the vacant positions that remain on the books as staffing shortages threaten the delivery of key city services and leave some existing employees overworked. “Allowing agencies to hire for vital positions is crucial,” Rein said. “These hiring systems are sticky. They make it hard to hire, and that needs to be reformed.”

Jiha’s letter includes a policy change that Rein said is a first step to removing some barriers to hiring. The so-called 2 for 1 rule – a policy that generally redistricted departments to hiring one position for every two that are vacated – is being lifted, and the letter said the the Office of Management and Budget is “committed to reviewing and approving new hire requests quickly and efficiently.”

And elsewhere. New York City issued fewer new housing permits in the 2010s than it did in the 2000s or in the 1960s; it has, year after year, created more jobs than homes.

Project supporters have said the city desperately needs housing for residents of all income-levels amid a serious shortage. A major project like Innovation Qns could help put a dent in the overall need.

For years, residential development has failed to keep pace with population growth, with less than 0.2 units added to the city’s housing stock for every new job created between 2010 and 2018, according to a report by the Citizens Budget Commission.

New York City faces a shortage of available apartments, leading to record-setting rents. But the problem is most dire for low-income New Yorkers: overall apartment vacancy rate for apartments priced below $1,500 is less than 1 percent, according to the city’s latest housing surve

The Citizens Budget Commission, a fiscal watchdog group, expected that the new order would result in around a quarter of the city’s vacant positions actually vanishing.

“This is a very positive move,” Andrew Rein, president of the commission, said in an interview. “The challenge is: given the gaps and the risks, much more needs to be done.”

We're at the half-way point in New York's state budget, and the state just released a progress report. Patrick Orecki from the Citizens Budget Commission has details.

The Citizens Budget Commission, a nonprofit fiscal watchdog, has several recommendations for the city to alleviate its workforce crisis. “The City has plenty of available positions, and in fact many more than it needs. The current staffing issues faced by some agencies and units are the result of management, procedural, and labor market challenges,” said Ana Champeny, CBC’s vice president for research, in testimony at the September Council hearing.

Champeny said the city should move vacant positions to where they are needed, providing more flexibility in reallocating headcount, improve systems to expedite recruitment and hiring, improve retention, improve reporting on vacancies and modernize civil service and public sector employment with skills training, bonuses, and negotiating flexibility and other work rules changes.

CBC President Andrew Rein said in a phone interview that the city could easily eliminate thousands of vacancies without cutting essential services. “You can eliminate probably half of the vacancies and still hire critical positions…You would still have 10,000 vacancies you can still fill,” he said.

“The challenge here is you need to identify what's critical, put the vacancies in the right places,” he added, “because attrition is a blunt tool.”