Chair Maloney on insurance, capital plan, and grocery stores

Thank you.

I'm honored to chair the committee, Council's Committee on Economic Development and to be joined by our finance chair, Lee, as well as Speaker Menon for this important conversation.

We're going to be hearing today from the interim president of NYC EDC on the fiscal 2027 executive budget, including the executive capital commitment plan.

As we move towards budget adoption, it's important that EDC's investments reflect its core priorities of growing innovation sectors, delivering sustainable communities, and strengthening the city's future economy.

This committee looks forward to discussing how the executive budget is going to advance those goals and how the investments will translate into tangible benefits for New Yorkers.

The largest investment included in this plan is for the city-backed insurance program, supported by $20 million in fiscal year 2027, increasing to $40 million in 2028 and 2029, totaling $100 million over three years.

For too long, affordable housing developers and providers have been constricted by rising insurance costs, with insurance premiums having more than doubled since 2017.

So this investment targets one of the highest operating costs for developers and comes at a critical time.

We look forward to hearing more details about the program.

how it will be structured to drive premiums down.

The executive capital commitment plan covers fiscals 2026 to 2030 and includes $3.5 billion for EDC.

That's a 16.8% decrease from the fiscal year 2027 preliminary capital commitment plan we discussed in March.

That plan has a 10-year commitment and includes $7.1 billion, only a small increase of $4.8 million from the preliminary plan.

So this change reflects a stretching of funds that were originally allocated within the next five years out to the 10-year plan,

and we're interested in hearing why these timelines have changed, whether any critical projects that EDC funds like Hunts Point Produce Market or Inwood Greenway will be impacted by those changes.

And third, the plan includes the $30 million allocated for city-backed grocery stores.

Since our first hearing, two of the five sites have now been identified, and we'd like a lot more detail on how these stores will operate, the criteria for site selection, the timeline for getting these up and running,

and how they will balance minimizing taxpayer subsidy while delivering on the promise of making essential household groceries more affordable.

I want to thank the interim president, Jenny Pack, for being here, as well as the chief of staff, Jen Montalvo, as well as the rest of EDC.

staff for coming here and testifying.

And I want to thank everyone who's been incredibly responsive to our many requests.

We would not have been able to analyze the city's budget at such a detailed level without EDC's partnership.

So I commend your leadership in this interim period.

And I also want to thank the finance staff, Spencer Kuhn,

Hector German, Daniel Krupp, Emre Edev, Chima Obichere

for their work preparing for this hearing, and the committee staff, Alex Polonov, William Hong-Yank for their support, as well as my own staff that put in a lot of effort, Sophie Secor, Isabella Soldano,

and Kaveri Kutagiri for all their hard work to prepare, and I'll now defer back to the finance chair.

Thank you.

And before we begin the testimony, just wanted to remind everyone that for this year's budget hearings, we're doing all the public testimony on the same day on Wednesday, June 10th, beginning at 930.

So please make sure to sign up for the public testimony portion, which again is Wednesday, June 10th, beginning at 930.

And I will now turn it over to Brian Sarfo, our committee counsel, who I would also love to thank for all of his hard work sitting here and keeping me in check.

Okay.

Take it away.