In a statement from the Citizens Budget Commission, President Andrew Rein had both praise and problems.

“Mayor Eric Adams’ Preliminary Budget proposes important, welcome, and refreshing initial steps in the right direction, especially reducing unneeded vacant positions to realize recurring savings and removing the $500 million in specious labor savings—a victory for fiscal integrity,” Rein said.

But he said some of the mayor’s estimates are somewhat misleading, and that to bolster New York’s competitiveness and ability to serve its residents in the future, “the City should take significant additional actions in the Executive and Adopted Budgets to make government more efficient, stave off the looming fiscal cliffs, and save for the inevitable next downturn.”

“The stimulus funds were one-time resources to help support schools during the pandemic, but schools will feel the elimination of these funds in their budgets in the upcoming years,” said Ana Champeny, deputy research director at the Citizens Budget Commission. “We’ve been concerned about frontloading [stimulus funds]. It’s important to make sure these one-time funds are used strategically to support temporary programs that address pandemic-related needs among students.”

Champeny said she would still like to see a more detailed accounting of how that federal money is being spent, and wants clearer information about how the education department is finding efficiencies.

Agencies should go back and identify how they can provide services more effectively,’ she said. At the same time, "DOE needs to be really clear about what’s the negative impact of the pandemic, what they are doing to address it, and what results they hope to achieve.”

A 2016 study from the Citizens Budget Commission predicts that if New York City’s Department of Sanitation collected curbside residential organic waste from sanitation districts it already serves, the City could divert 83,812 tons of waste while saving $610,800 per year.

New York City has implemented a pilot composting program wherein residential buildings can opt-in to participate.

Peter Orecki, director of state studies for the Citizens Budget Commission, a government watchdog group, said the state should be "doing a much better job in promoting accountability" with the film tax credit program and other economic development initiatives

With all of its $10 billion bundle of incentives, the state needs to stay on top of whether the various programs are achieving their job creation goals and having the intended economic impacts — if any, he said.

"The key question is: What number of jobs would not have happened if the film tax credit didn't exist," Orecki said.

Citizens Budget Commission President Andrew Rein said the preliminary budget was a good start.

"Mayor Eric Adams’ preliminary budget proposes important, welcome, and refreshing initial steps in the right direction, especially reducing unneeded vacant positions to realize recurring savings and removing the $500 million in specious labor savings — a victory for fiscal integrity,” he said in a statement.

“Still, to bolster New York’s competitiveness and ability to serve New Yorkers in the future, the city should take significant additional actions in the executive and adopted budgets to make government more efficient, stave off the looming fiscal cliffs, and save for the inevitable next downturn,” he said.

This still doesn't preclude members from determining just where monies in the budget should be shifted to suit their needs.

“Sometimes they have suggested cuts to improve efficiency in programs or agencies as a way to pay for their asks,” Ana Champeny, deputy research director at the Citizens Budget Commission, a fiscal watchdog group that releases its own budget analysis, said.

Providing free child care to more New Yorkers is a better way to spend money, according to progressive groups that testified at the budget hearing. “Investing in childcare, higher education, mixed-income affordable and homeless housing, health care and climate justice will pay off now by making New York more affordable, creating tens of thousands of good-paying union jobs, and in the future with expanded economic opportunities and cost savings,” Michael Kink, executive director of the Strong Economy for All Coalition supported by labor unions like SEIU 1199 and leftist advocacy groups, said in his budget testimony. He cited research from the nonpartisan Citizens Budget Commission, generally seen as a moderating influence in state politics, that found New Yorkers are getting mixed results with the approximately $10 billion spent annually on state economic development programs. Brisport and other lawmakers say that about $5 billion would be enough to fund universal child care.

The president of the Citizens Budget Commission, Andrew Rein, said Adams’ spending plan “proposes important, welcome, and refreshing initial steps in the right direction.”

But in a prepared statement. Rein added: “Many more steps should be taken in the Executive and Adopted Budgets to address the city and federal fiscal cliffs, restructure to make government more efficient, and save for the inevitable next downturn.”

Andrew Rein, president of the fiscal watchdog Citizens Budget Commission, called Adams’ preliminary proposal “good initial steps,” but said more cost cutting is required after de Blasio, who presided over the largest budget in city history last year.

“It’s a preliminary budget that takes important initial steps, especially reducing head count,” he said. “On the other hand, there’s a lot more that needs to be done to make government more efficient.”

Rein reserved special praise for Adams’ fiscal approach to the NYPD and suggested the mayor would do well to apply it to the rest of city government.

“One of the things he does in this budget that’s great is in the Police Department he’s reorganizing functions to support his initiatives,” he noted. “He’s not saying add money. He’s saying let’s figure out how to use the resources we have better.”

The NYPD’s budget for the upcoming fiscal year is proposed to be about $5.1 billion, excluding certain costs like pensions and fringe benefits. It is currently $5.3 billion. Mayor Bill de Blasio raised the NYPD’s budget every year he was in office — which started at $4.7 billion in 2014 — except for one year at the start of the pandemic, when it went down year over year, according to Andrew Rein, president of the business-backed Citizens Budget Commission.

"He’s keeping it relatively flat," Rein said, cautioning that overtime costs typically exceed what’s planned.

"Often the PD blows its overtime budget," he said.

Citizens Budget Commission, a nonprofit watchdog, praised the mayor for proposing “important, welcome, and refreshing initial steps in the right direction” towards fiscal stability. But, CBC President Andrew Rein warned about economic uncertainties and fiscal cliffs that the city faces, with recurring programs either funded only through the current fiscal year or with one-time federal relief funds that will eventually dry up.

“Many more steps should be taken in the Executive and Adopted Budgets to address the city and federal fiscal cliffs, restructure to make government more efficient, and save for the inevitable next downturn,” Rein said in a statement.

$22 billion – The amount of federal COVID relief funding the city is expected to receive, between fiscal year 2020 and fiscal year 2025, according to the Citizens Budget Commission. Federal aid has allowed record high spending in the current fiscal year, but the federal funds are tapering off in the upcoming year and Adams has to adjust.