“The Citizens Budget Commission applauds the Adams Administration taking on the challenge of improving the city’s capital contracting and delivery process,” said Citizens Budget Commission President Andrew S. Rein. “The Task Force’s initial recommendations include some positive proposals, such as early completion incentives and a public database of contracts, that should help speed up the process and increase transparency. The Task Force also rightly calls for the state’s partnership to increase procurement vehicle flexibility. We look forward to the ongoing work and additional recommendations to improve public accountability and performance management, a process critical to executing well.”

As the Citizens Budget Commission pointed out, spending from all sources now totals $34,000 per student, almost double the national average.

That might be defensible if student achievement was also off the charts. But as the CBC noted, the spending comes “without delivering above-average results.”

Andrew Rein, the president of government watchdog Citizens Budget Commission, said it is within the agency’s power to pursue operation and maintenance reforms that could create up to $2.9 billion in annual savings. But those changes would be major overhauls that would require the MTA to fundamentally restructure crucial functions, such as revisiting union contracts to change how staff operate trains and buses.

Carving out savings, Rein said, must be an equilibrium between streamlining operating expenses and being mindful of the impacts of potential new levies on the broader economy.

“You need a strong MTA for the economy to run well—no question—but we also need to be cautious about our taxes and our fees, which are some of the highest in the nation,” said Rein. “We need to balance efficiencies within the MTA and if there are new revenues that are still needed, what should those revenues be and what is the economic implication of that?

A Citizens Budget Commission report on the city’s land use decision-making process also pointed out that the land use process itself is lengthy, costly, and often a “contentious” and political system that hampers affordability and job growth. The report added that housing production has categorically failed to keep up with population growth in the city.

“All three of those directed recovery funds to the city and the state and other places for different things with different levels of flexibility,” said Ana Champeny, vice president for research at Citizens Budget Commission, a nonprofit fiscal watchdog.

What they're saying: "When finance is doing well, that whole ecosystem is doing well. And that shows up as higher personal income tax collections," says Ana Champeny, vice president for research at Citizens Budget Commission, a think tank focused on fiscal issues in New York.

By the numbers: Just one part of the financial services industry — the securities sector, where stocks and bonds are brought to market, traded or sold to investors — accounts for about 23% of the city's 2021 personal income tax revenues, according to the Office of the New York State Comptroller.

That's because, despite the pandemic, Wall Street had a tremendous 2021 — the Fed's efforts to push interest rates lower to cushion the economy during COVID had sent markets soaring.
The city's Independent Budget Office (IBO) estimated Wall Street profits hit $61 billion in 2021, just shy of the record hit in 2009.

Throughout the COVID crisis, "you actually didn't see a decline in income tax revenues, in part because Wall Street still did well, especially last year," Champeny says

The transportation sector accounts for the greatest share of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the state. In 2018, this was equal to approximately 47% of all GHG emissions, or 175.9 million metric tons of CO2. Nevertheless, New York’s transportation emissions per capita are about 27% below the national average, the second lowest of any other US state. Despite ranking quite favourably at the national level, in 2020, New York and California together account for 18% of the 103.8 million registered passenger vehicles in the US.

Meanwhile, in New York, where housing production both in the city and the suburbs has been anemic for decades, Gov. Hochul proposed — then withdrew — proposals to require local governments to allow more accessory telling units and kickstart the development of multi-unit buildings near transit hubs. We appreciate the attempt but need to see her try again, this time using her leverage to get real change.

New York is sending $34 billion to its schools this year between state and federal aid, a 6.7 percent increase from last school year and 89 percent above the national average on a per-pupil basis, a report Monday found.

The findings from the Citizens Budget Commission, the business-backed group, contend that even with record school spending in New York that outpaces any state in the nation, there are still disparities in funding between rich and poor districts, as well as significant achievement gaps. The group is calling on the state to bolster its oversight of school aid.

The largest expense in the state’s $221 billion annual budget, school spending has long drawn scrutiny, Joe Spector reports.

New York is sending $34 billion to its schools this year between state and federal aid, a 6.7 percent increase from last school year and 89 percent above the national average on a per-pupil basis, a report out today found.

The findings from the Citizens Budget Commission, the business-backed group, contend that even with record school spending in New York that outpaces any state in the nation, there are still disparities in funding between rich and poor districts, as well as significant achievement gaps. The group is calling on the state to bolster its oversight of school aid.

Officials tackling the housing crisis agree that the city needs to shorten the environmental review process that snarls rezonings. But it is not clear how far reforms will go — or if there will even be any.

At a Citizens Budget Commission panel Wednesday about fixing the city’s land use review process, city and state officials voiced support for a number of recommendations made by the think tank, such as revising the city and state’s environmental review requirements.

“It is too long and it is too complicated,” City Planning head Dan Garodnick said of the City Environmental Quality Review, or CEQR.

A report by the budget group this month blamed pre-certification and environmental reviews for dragging out project timelines and driving up costs. The group proposed limiting the types of projects required to undergo environmental analysis and allowing appeals of rejections by the City Council.

Andrew Rein, president of the Citizens Budget Commission, called the PEG order “a prudent and fiscally necessary step to stabilize New York City’s budget in the long run.

“In June, we called for a 3 percent to 5 percent PEG, and the fiscal outlook has weakened since then,” Rein said in a statement released by the CBC. “Budget Director Jacques Jiha’s PEG letter correctly points to the myriad forces increasing the City’s future budget gaps by billions of dollars, including higher pension contributions, future collective bargaining agreements, and looming fiscal cliffs as federal Covid aid is exhausted.”