The expansion would follow the lead of California and Illinois, which have recently offered health insurance to older low-income undocumented residents, and would make New York the first state to offer such coverage regardless of age. The legislature estimated that the expansion would cost $345 million a year, taking that figure from a report published this year by the fiscally conservative Citizens Budget Commission and the liberal think tank Community Service Society. The Hochul administration put the price tag far higher, at $1.9 billion.

The comptroller would be hard pressed to find an extra $1.77 billion in the city’s budget with the elimination of 421a. Not only would the city realize no increase in taxes, but it would likely see a marked drop in tax revenue. As the nonpartisan nonprofit Citizen Budget Commission concluded days before the comptroller’s report, “allowing 421a to lapse would significantly reduce rental housing development, worsen the city’s existing housing supply shortage and make New York City’s already scarce and costly rental housing scarcer and more expensive.”

The bulk of the projected $1 billion in cuts were supposed to come from a drastically reduced overtime budget. An analysis by the Citizens Budget Commission last July found that ultimately only $322 million was cut from the NYPD in the final Fiscal Year 2021 budget. That same analysis found the Fiscal Year 2022 budget actually increased the NYPD’s allotment by $465 million compared to the prior year.

A recent report by Community Service Society and the independent Citizens Budget Commission evaluated the legislation, which would apply to adults ages 19 and up regardless of immigration status.



Among the findings:


· Nearly 426,000 residents in New York State are currently ineligible for public health care programs due to immigration status, including about 154,000 undocumented adults.

· Expanding coverage to these individuals would result in 46,000 newly insured immigrants, with an annual net state cost of $345 million.

· The estimate is based on leveraging existing state emergency Medicaid spending on this population, as well as additional state Health Care Reform Act revenues and a reduction of $19 million in annual uncompensated care costs to hospitals.

Though America overall is not building enough housing, the problem in New York is especially acute. Over the past decade, New York City issued fewer permits for new housing units per capita than almost every other major U.S. city, including San Francisco, according to a report from the nonprofit Citizens Budget Commission.

But many of these stadium deals turned into drains on the public coffers, and economic research has found that professional sports stadiums rarely have significant impact on overall economic growth.

“The public and lawmakers should both be given the information and the time to fully evaluate this,” said Patrick Orecki, a director of state studies at the Citizen Budget Commission, a fiscal watchdog.

Many fiscal watchdogs say that reserve funds help avert the need for cuts in economic downturns. And they argue that in future crises, New York won’t be able to count on the enormous federal aid it received during the pandemic to hold dramatic cuts at bay.“Two years ago, the plan was ‘We'll probably have to raise taxes and maybe cut as much as 20% out of certain programs because we don't have money saved right now,’” said Patrick Orecki, director of state studies at the fiscally conservative Citizens Budget Commission. “It’s not a hypothetical exercise.”

Senate and Assembly Democrats want to spend at least $6 billion more than what Gov. Kathy Hochul proposed in her $216 billion budget in January, according to the Citizens Budget Commission.

The additional spending, without including the billions for excluded workers, could leave state officials without the ability to store money away for a rainy day fund and could set a "path to multi-billion dollar tax hikes or cuts in other areas of the budget in a couple years' time," according to Patrick Orecki, director of state studies for the commission.

'This is likely going to be a structural break in the way that people view work and commuting and just being in an office,' Alex Heil, vice president of research for the Citizens Budget Commission, told Bloomberg.

The shift to work from home could be an opportunity to transform empty Manhattan offices, with cultural centers, biotech labs and startup incubators, New York City Comptroller Brad Lander told Bloomberg.

The Citizens Budget Commission came out Monday in favor of an idea that’s bound to go nowhere because it makes too much sense: base the state’s investment in a new Bills stadium on the actual benefits it would produce for taxpayers.

Said the commission:

All economic development spending, whether direct, through tax incentives, or through reduced utility or other costs, should be justified by a rigorous analysis that shows that the public benefits that would accrue will exceed the public’s costs.

New York does not have a good track record of demonstrating that its economic development programs yield benefits exceeding their costs. Furthermore, past research most often has found that professional sports franchises and investments in sports facilities do not have significant, consistent, positive economic impacts.

While data on the costs of building a new stadium for the Bills and the total economic and fiscal benefits of the franchise being in Buffalo exist, available data do not identify the incremental impacts of a new stadium or of the Bills leaving Buffalo. If a State subsidy is proposed, these impacts should be identified and used in a rigorous, transparent analysis that shows the incremental benefits will exceed the subsidy’s cost.

The report is a smart, comprehensive read. Dive in.

The Citizens Budget Commission disagrees. The group released a report on the tax break that calls for 421-a to be amended, not ended, which would “significantly reduce rental housing development, worsen the city’s existing housing supply shortage, and make New York City’s already scarce and costly rental housing scarcer and more expensive.”

Patrick Orecki, director of state studies at the Citizens Budget Commission, believes Hochul is reluctant to meet the $4 billion progressive demand on universal child care. Orecki said that anything that’s added beyond what the governor had in the financial plan will likely be at the expense of the $4 billion in “rainy day fund” reserve deposits.

“$4 billion is a very big program even in the context of the state budget,” Orecki said. “The state has this opportunity. To build reserves and keep the budget balanced over the next 5 years and potentially set itself up to reduce the tax burden in the future and adding costs like these jeopardizes these things.”

Orecki said a $4 billion universal child care plan risks creating an unbalanced budget.