The independent Citizens Budget Commission questioned the property tax rebate checks, saying they “are not well-targeted relief programs.” The CBC said many who need relief most don’t own homes.

The Citizens Budget Commission did not have a quick answer on costs either earlier this week, but warned that much of the research on the benefits of class sizes is below 20 students.


“It’s going to cost a lot of money,” said Andrew Rein, president of the nonprofit fiscal watchdog. “There’s not the evidence it’ll have a positive effect, and there’s the possibility it’ll have a negative effect elsewhere.”

The state's approach on the East Side is prudent, said Patrick Orecki, director of state studies for the nonpartisan Citizens Budget Commission in New York City.



"We have seen plenty of state economic development spending that hasn't worked, so there are certainly models for that," Orecki said. "Obviously, trying to be more integrated and concentrated and also localized is a more likely scenario for positive results."

New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli and former Lt. Gov. Richard Ravitch presented Eugene Keilin with the Felix Rohatyn Award at the Citizens Budget Commission’s awards dinner.

The award, given Thursday night at the CBC’s 90th annual gala held at Cipriani 42nd Street, honors a person whose career exemplifies public service and a commitment to New York’s sound fiscal management.

Last year its sponsors withdrew the bill after tenants and multiple housing advocates expressed concerns. But Russ mounted an aggressive campaign to get it back on track, and this year groups that expressed skepticism — including the Legal Aid Society, the Citizens Budget Commission and the Community Service Society — all got behind it.

Together, with $1.5 billion in additional tax revenue, which the mayor’s Office of Management and Budget believes the city can set aside in 2023, the city may have as much as $4.8 billion in additional tax revenue to either spend or save in the next two years.



“It’s a windfall,” said Ana Champeny, vice president of research at the Citizen’s Budget Commission, a fiscal research and advocacy nonprofit. “It’s like the city winning some kind of lottery.”

Citizens Budget Commission chief Andrew Rein rightly calls on Mayor Eric Adams to put more than half of $4.5 billion in newfound revenue (over two years) into reserve funds to ensure that essential public services are protected when the next recession hits.

We’d be happy if Adams sets aside even more than the $2.3 billion, plus $1.7 billion to the labor reserve to cover the cost of future collective bargaining increases, that the CBC calls for.

“[T]he monitor has missed an opportunity to identify and advocate for regulatory changes or labor practices changes that would allow NYCHA to make its operations more efficient,” the Citizens Budget Commission wrote in an analysis released this week.



Cutting costs and improving efficiency are key items for the agency, the CBC said, because it has been starved of cash following decades of state and federal budget cuts.

Supporters of a revised tax incentive said it would help alleviate the city’s severe housing shortage, a main driver of its affordability crisis. While the city saw a 22 percent jump in new jobs from 2010 to 2018, the city’s housing stock grew by only 4 percent, according to the nonpartisan Citizens Budget Commission.

"CBC has long championed a true Rainy Day fund,” said Andrew Rein, President of the Citizens Budget Commission. "Implementing the Rainy Day fund right — with mandatory deposits, a target size and withdrawal limits — is critical to the city’s ability to weather the next storm.”

Citizens Budget Commission Housing and Economic Development Studies Director Sean Campion explains what could happen if a controversial property tax break in New York City - known as 421-a - is allowed to expire this summer.

Progressives are hot to see the 421-a tax abatement, which encourages developers to build more affordable housing by reducing their property-tax liability, die when it expires next month. But if the Legislature doesn’t pass a replacement, it’s a clear loss for New York City.

A new analysis by the Citizens Budget Commission confirms those losses include:

Less rental housing construction.
Significantly less affordable-housing development.
And less property-tax revenue for the city.
Supposedly pro-tenant activists and lawmakers won’t admit that, absent some incentive like 421-a, developers will stop building residential units (except luxury ones) because the default tax rate for new construction is prohibitively high.

They also claim that ending the abatement will free up $1.8 billion in tax revenues. The CBC points out that not only are they wrong, but that much current revenue wouldn’t exist without 421-a.

Existing projects will still benefit from the abatements granted before 421-a lapsed, so the city will “lose” only about $100 million per year through Fiscal Year 2029 if the program’s not renewed; not until FY 2043 will even $1 billion of the now-foregone revenue be returned to the tax rolls.

Meanwhile, CBC reports, most development that occurs thanks to 421-a wouldn’t happen. That means the city loses out on the tax take such projects would generate after the abatements expire — as well as on the new housing (both market-rate and affordable) constructed.

So the budget watchdog urges both renewing or replacing 421-a and a broader package of policies to boost housing production, such as reducing construction and operating costs, increasing as-of-right zoning capacity and reforming the property-tax code.

A sane city tax code wouldn’t make it impossibly expensive to build new non-luxury housing; 421-a is a patch that allows enough construction to prevent Gotham from losing ground. Fixing the entire property-tax code won’t happen this year (or maybe ever); if the Legislature doesn’t replace the abatement now, it’s dooming New York to housing decay.