“The cost of issuing the debt and repaying the debt are accounted for in the budget right now,” said Patrick Orecki of the Citizens Budget Commission. He said if given the green the light, state leaders will need to be strategic about how the money is spent.

“It’ll be really important for the state to assess what the most urgent needs are, identify the most cost-effective projects and programs to be invested in and also align with existing state and new federal sources of funding too,” Orecki said.

The Citizens Budget Commission has proposed relaxing environmental reviews, which must be completed before a rezoning application begins the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure, which itself takes up to seven months.

The watchdog group’s report, which looked at 171 private zoning applications between 2014 and 2017, found the median time for a land use application to be approved was two and a half years. Approximately 80 percent of that time went toward pre-certification and environmental review — the most expensive and time-consuming part of the process.

“The first test will be on the first project that tries to go through this,” said Sean Campion, director of housing and economic development studies at the Citizens Budget Commission, a think tank. “When you’re starting from scratch there’s always some possibility that they’re going to have to test new precedent that this is valid and okay, so someone has to take on that risk.”

“Profits the last two years were unusually high and unlikely to continue, but it does put the city’s and state fiscal situation at risk,” said Ana Champeny, research director at the Citizens Budget Commission. “As the comptroller points out, it could get worse, and both the city and state need to be working at restraining spending.”

It would be better, of course, if housing could be built without all these layers of review and political drama, which raise the cost of each apartment by about $70,000, according to a Citizens Budget Commission study. But outdated zoning across much of the city makes it necessary.

Fiscal conservatives have argued that bond acts add to the state’s overspending and overborrowing, which has made some parts of the state, including Long Island, among the highest-taxed areas in the nation. But even fiscal conservatives support the idea of putting major debt proposals to a public vote. The independent Citizens Budget Commission makes no recommendation to voters on the bond act. But the government watchdog group said that while the need for the funding is clear, the state should make public a needs assessment for the projects and monitor the progress going forward to make sure the money is spent effectively.

The cost to expand 3-K in 2025, when current funding ends, will have to be split between federal and local funding, $376 million each, a 2021 Citizens Budget Commission analysis shows. Without additional city funds, 3-K programs would have to be cut back.

Ms. Hochul’s critics have denounced the $350 million pot of money, which can be spent with great flexibility at the discretion of the executive branch, as a “slush fund.” But it was also part of nearly $1.6 billion in similar funding for capital projects added late into the budget negotiations, which Patrick Orecki, the director of state studies at the Citizens Budget Commission, described as a classic example of pork spending.

“This funding really came at the 11th hour,” he said. “So it seems like they’re probably the result of political negotiations, rather than rigorous capital planning and identifying what the most urgent priorities of the state’s infrastructure are.”

The cost to expand 3-K in 2025, when current funding ends, will have to be split between federal and local funding, $376 million each, a 2021 Citizens Budget Commission analysis shows. Without additional city funds, 3-K programs would have to be cut back.

Ms. Hochul’s critics have denounced the $350 million pot of money, which can be spent with great flexibility at the discretion of the executive branch, as a “slush fund.” But it was also part of nearly $1.6 billion in similar funding for capital projects added late into the budget negotiations, which Patrick Orecki, the director of state studies at the Citizens Budget Commission, described as a classic example of pork spending.

“This funding really came at the 11th hour,” he said. “So it seems like they’re probably the result of political negotiations, rather than rigorous capital planning and identifying what the most urgent priorities of the state’s infrastructure are.”

This starts with permits; Jersey City and neighboring cities build substantially more housing than most of the New York metro area at large. According to the Citizen’s Budget Commission, Hudson County overall permits well over double the rate of housing that New York City does (51 units/10ks residents vs. 22 units/10k residents). For this reason Hudson County is growing faster than New York City (7% vs 3% from 2011-2020) and the percentage growth rate since then is a whopping 18% for Jersey City.

New York’s housing production is anemic relative to demand, both in the city and surrounding non-Jersey suburbs. Notes the Citizen’s Budget Commission: “counties like Westchester, Rockland, Nassau, and Suffolk have some of the lowest housing production rates in the country.” Despite being known for density more than any other U.S. city, New York has in fact downzoned in recent decades. A 2010 NYU study found that out of 180,000 parcels, “14 percent had been upzoned, 23 percent downzoned, and 63 percent had not had their development capacity changed by more than 10 percent” the prior decade, reported Politico.

“I think that’s how they’ll achieve their fiscal year savings for 2022, but unless they give up those jobs long term, they’ll need to make programmatic or efficiency improvements, and I think that’s what OMB will be looking for,” said Champeny.

Her colleague and fellow CBC researcher, Sean Campion, felt that city agencies may try to learn how to become more efficient, even with fewer people on staff.

“They’ve already been trying to figure out how to become more productive — getting vouchers out the door faster, closing deals faster, being more proactive in terms of identifying inspections and responding to complaints,” Campion said. “They were already going down that path since before the [budget cut] announcement. It’ll be interesting to see how that translates.”