BREAKING DOWN THE NYPD BUDGET — Mayor Eric Adams’ budget reverses a planned transfer of school safety agents out of the NYPD and into the Department of Education, according to a budget analysis by the Citizens Budget Commission. The move was promised by former Mayor Bill de Blasio during 2020 protests, but that year’s budget did not reflect the change and it was scheduled to take place in fiscal 2023. Adams’ 2023 preliminary budget cancels the planned transfer of 5,290 civilian personnel in the School Safety Division from the NYPD to the DOE, and the DOE will continue to pay the NYPD for the cost of the school safety division. The DOE is saving $34.6 million by eliminating 560 vacant school safety positions.



CBC’s analysis also predicts that the NYPD will once again blow past its overtime budget — by $258 million in the current fiscal year, for total overtime spending of $742 million, up from $480 million last year. Analysts also found that the budget cut Adams’ mandates for city agencies added up to $113 million for the NYPD — 2.2 percent, below the 3 percent target demanded of agencies. Among the 10 largest city agencies subject to the cut, the NYPD’s cut is the fourth lowest for 2022 and the second lowest for 2023. The City Council is scheduled to hold a hearing on the police budget today.

While both legislative one-house budgets add spending to the executive budget, New York state budget watchdogs are sounding the alarm over the economy. The Citizens Budget Commission is urging lawmakers to exercise some restraint when it comes to spending.

Reinvent Albany previously conducted an analysis of subway cars needed versus those purchased, building off of research by the Citizens Budget Commission. We found a similar lack of investment in subway cars compared to the stated needs, as seen in the accompanying chart.

The Ukrainian military budget was nearly $6 billion in 2020, according to the World Bank; the New York Police Department’s FY2020 budget in 2020 was nearly $11 billion, including a $5.6 billion operating budget and $5.3 billion “centrally allocated” budget including pensions and fringe benefits, according to the nonprofit Citizens Budget Commission.

Gov. Kathy Hochul’s proposed Fiscal Year 2023 budget document fails to mention NYCHA. Her proposed budget does not contain any funding for NYCHA, according to Sean Campion, senior research associate at the Citizens Budget Commission, who argued this omission from the state is deliberate.

“The state was waiting to see what they’d get from Build Back Better before they put any money in,” Campion said. “They anticipated Build Back Better was going to pass and it had tens of billions [for NYCHA] and everyone expected it to be passed and it didn’t. It caught everyone by surprise.”

“They do have the time to fix it if they’re willing to find the efficiencies elsewhere and prioritize,” said Ana Champeny, deputy research director for Citizens Budget Commission, a budget watchdog group.

Patrick Orecki, director of state studies at the Citizens Budget Commission, a nonpartisan fiscal watchdog, said the programs might not be structured well. “Clearly some of the programs designed were a little too restrictive," he said, "either because the eligibility requirements were too restrictive or applying for the money was found to be too difficult for applicants."

Citizens Budget Commission, a nonprofit watchdog, similarly called for continuing a PEG in the next budget, plans for avoiding fiscal cliffs, and annual deposits in the Rainy Day Fund.

“Streamlining and improving City services is critically important to ensure effective use of taxpayer resources and high-quality services for residents and businesses,” said Ana Champeny, CBC’s deputy research director, in her testimony. Though she praised the PEG initiative, she noted that most of the savings came from eliminating vacancies and re-estimating spending rather than more operational efficiencies.

Ana Champeny, a deputy research director at the non-partisan Citizens Budget Commission, described the failure to factor in potential raises as a “real fiscal risk,” but also noted that Adams most likely didn’t earmark it in the preliminary budget to gain leverage in labor negotiations.

“On the one hand, it’s fiscally prudent to have something set aside. On the other hand, the city needs to negotiate the best contracts it can with labor,” she said. “You don’t want to show all your cards when you go into a negotiation.”

This 5-day average for the MTA reached a high of 62% the second week of Dec for New York City subways, before disruption by Omicron.

The Citizens Budget Commission shows similar results on their seven-day rolling average — but how should we measure transit ridership? At some point there needs to be recognition of a new operating model. Waiting to return to pre-COVID ridership may never happen. But without those riders many transit operations are at risk, particularly bus service.

The proposed changes to the state's insurance coverage policy is for New Yorkers with income up to 200 percent of the federal poverty level and are excluded specifically because of their immigration status.

A joint report by the Community Service Society and the Citizens Budget Commission estimates the change would lead to 46,000 new enrollees — many of them undocumented immigrants — at a cost of $345 million, which accounts for $316 million in savings from spending through emergency Medicaid.

Though former mayors, including Mike Bloomberg, commonly pursued the so-called Programs to Eliminate the Gap, in which city agencies routinely identify savings to reduce future budget gaps, PEGs weren’t a constant feature in de Blasio’s budgets. “There’s a lot of muscle memory that’s been lost throughout city government,” said Andrew Rein, president of the nonpartisan think tank Citizens Budget Commission. “There are many great city managers, but the discipline of having to regularly look at your operations and say, ‘How do we preserve services but reduce spending by being more efficient?’ That discipline has been lost.”