In a statement on the new budget, the nonpartisan Citizens Budget Commission called the rainy day fund contribution “modest,” and noted that the revised budget eliminated savings that were created in the preliminary spending plan by adding back thousands of vacant positions.



“Spending more now is seductive, but shortsighted,” Andrew Rein, president of the commission, said in the statement. “Without increasing productivity or shrinking lower priority programs, the City may be on a path to massive service cuts or harmful tax increases when the next downturn arrives.”

Andrew Rein, president of the nonpartisan Citizens Budget Commission, lamented that Adams left out the “program to eliminate the gap” included in his preliminary proposal.



The program, known as a PEG, would’ve slashed spending at nearly all city agencies by 3%. Omitting it could hamper the administration’s “ability to protect future New Yorkers from economic instability or unnecessary service cuts,” Rein said.



“Spending more now is seductive, but shortsighted,” Rein said. “Undisciplined management and a spending spree will set the city back, not propel it forward.”

Adams’ plan “takes some positive steps but focuses on spending more, nearly to the exclusion of the savings, restructuring and efficiency needed to shore up the city’s fiscal house,” warns Citizens Budget Commission head Andrew Rein. “Without increasing productivity or shrinking lower-priority programs, the city may be on a path to massive service cuts or harmful tax increases.”

But Andrew Rein, president of the Citizens Budget Commission, a fiscal watchdog group, chastised the mayor for spending more without finding more savings,



The latest budget will expand the city’s municipal headcount by 3,000.



“Spending more now is seductive, but shortsighted,” he said in a statement.

Those outyear gaps combined with larger fiscal risks — an economic recovery that lags the nation, inflation and a weakening commercial office market — sowed concern with the Citizens Budget Commission, a fiscal watchdog organization that argued the mayor should be saving more.



“They identified a whole bunch of new priorities — many of them are good — but he did nothing to improve productivity or the structure of government to offset that,” said Andrew Rein, president of the budget commission. “So we’re setting ourselves up for a future crisis, and that risks New Yorker’s health and safety.”



In addition, the mayor will need to negotiate new contracts with the city’s unionized labor force. The administration budgeted for a 0.5 percent increase in wages, though whatever deal materializes is sure to top that figure. A raise of 3 percent, for example, would add more than $3 billion to the city’s budget annually by 2025, according to Rein.



A fact sheet released by the mayor’s office touted “good stewardship of city resources in the face of uncertainties related to rising inflation, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and choppy Wall Street performance” but Rein countered Adams wasn’t doing enough to protect against those factors.

Andrew Rein, president of the Citizens Budget Commission, a fiscal watchdog group, said the mayor’s new budget proposal added too much spending.

“The executive budget takes some positive steps but focuses on spending more, nearly to the exclusion of the savings, restructuring and efficiency needed to shore up the city’s fiscal house,” he said.

“The Citizens Budget Commission applauds this important step toward a more efficient and sustainable city,” said Andrew Rein, president, Citizens Budget Commission. “We have consistently urged the city to increase the efficiency of citywide services, like fleet, procurement, and space. Reversing recent growth in the fleet is a positive move to reduce inefficiency and save money.”

In February, Mayor Adams proposed a preliminary budget of $98.5 billion that he said was “radically practical” while also directing more assistance for the poor, including a dramatic expansion of the city’s summer youth jobs program. While the budget fell under the current fiscal year's $103 billion budget approved under former Mayor Bill de Blasio, an analysis by the fiscal watchdog group Citizens Budget Commission found that Adams’ preliminary plan would in fact increase city spending by about 2.3%.

“The way that budgeting should work is by identifying your needs, counting the resources available to pay for them, and matching them up to maximize value,” said Patrick Orecki, director of state studies for the independent Citizens Budget Commission

Orecki also said a lump sum fund like the Long Island Investment Fund is a concern that could lead to waste and excessive politicization.

"Divvying the money up later on makes it even more susceptible to political forces rather than rigorous policy choices," Orecki said. "When a lump sum pot like this has been appropriated, it's now free to be spent quickly, broadly and unilaterally."

One of the main problems with taxing high-end second residences dates back to a law from the 1980s called Section 581. It requires the city to value all co-ops and condos based on the rental income they would bring in, according to Ana Champeny, deputy research director at the Citizens Budget Commission.

Transportation accounts for approximately half the state’s total carbon dioxide emissions, according to the Citizens Budget Commission. In her State of the State Address, Gov. Hochul rightly committed to transitioning state vehicles to electric over the next decade and incentivizing consumer and for-hire-vehicle drivers to switch to EVs.

Alex Heil, vice president for research at Citizens Budget Commission, a nonprofit fiscal watchdog, said it's important for the city to “not just look at projects in terms of what are the glitzy projects that seem good in a brochure or they appear good on paper, but actually look at some of the projects that are important to keep infrastructure functioning.”

He noted, as Lander did, that the city needs to bring massive parts of its infrastructure into a state of good repair. “The more you let assets deteriorate, the more you have to pay for emergency maintenance,” he said. “Emergency maintenance comes with a massive premium over standard scheduled maintenance costs. And that's true for all assets.”