Chair Lee questions DOHMH on chief savings officer and contract savings

Thank you.

I appreciate the citations in your opening statement.

Very awesome.

Okay, so I'm going to ask a few questions, and when the speaker comes back, I'll turn it over to her.

to her.

So really quickly for the executive plan, what was the process for your chief savings officer to conduct the required review of spending and operations within the 45-day timeframe, and what are the top line

items that were identified and submitted to OMB?

Yeah, first of all, let me just start by saying

We are in a very good position with this executive budget, thanks to the work of OMB, this administration, but also thanks to your support in this council.

You put us in a good position to execute with regard to all of the services that we need to keep people safe in the city.

With regard to the chief savings officer role, we were managing two very specific things and trying to make sure that we were doing both.

Both complying with and aligning with the mayor's vision on EO12.

And at the same time finding places with savings that did not affect core services.

Exactly.

And we were able to do that throughout the entire budget, and I'll let Aaron talk a little bit more about the specifics there.

Yeah, thanks, Commissioner, and thanks for the question, Chair Lee.

Right.

These savings exercises are never easy.

They're never fun.

But I think we were absolutely able to meet both the mission and the charge of the administration to find savings while also minimizing or actually not having any impact at all on New Yorkers'lives.

So,

In sum, the savings items that touch the public health side of the budget are Legionella.

So this is just a re-estimate for the current year only for spending based on less spending than expected.

So that's a simple one.

Zadroga re-estimate.

This is the World Trade Center health program.

This is really a program run by the federal government.

The city pays 10%.

So we were able to identify savings in the current year.

To the extent that the feds spend less, the city's obligated to spend less.

So that was sort of an easy one to recognize as well.

Early intervention re-evaluation, we took a identified savings of $500,000 in FY27 in the out years.

That one's really about eliminating unnecessary evaluation procedures and aligning our practices with a recent state regulation.

Okay.

Yeah.

And we found some space savings.

We have a large real estate footprint across the city, so we're always thinking about ways to consolidate and think about best ways to use space efficiently.

So I think we've made some progress there.

So I think all of those taken together on the health side are really an example of finding savings without having any impact on services and certainly nothing that would be reflected.

Right, and we definitely were very clear about that on the council side, too, that we don't want services to get cut or anything to be sacrificed on that end.

So I'm glad to hear that you were able to do that without.