Chair Lee questions DOF on FY26 savings and position reductions

Okay, so for savings, there are a number of savings that were taken as part of the directed savings plan from Executive Order 12.

And this includes abatement compliance, OTPs savings, PS savings, STAR credit changes, and a vacancy reduction.

These all provide savings of $22 million in FY26 and $29.2 million in FY27.

There is a $4.9 million in PS savings for FY26.

Can you please explain where the savings are coming from?

Sure.

So that reflects Department of Finance's 1.5 savings target related to the Chief Savings Officer's targets for FY26.

A lot of it reflects the timing adjustments for when we were able to bring on new hires and implement some of the programs that were previously added.

I'm happy to have our Chief Financial Officer, Jackie James, maybe add a little bit.

It had to do with some programs that we got funded for early and beginning of the year, and it did not get implemented until like six months later.

So those were savings we were able to offer up to OMB.

Okay.

Okay, and there is a baseline reduction of 12 positions from DOF for savings of $1.2 million starting in FY26.

What are these positions, and will DOF see any change?

changes in services provided to the public?

So we work closely with OMB to identify the vacancies that were reduced without impacting any operations on customer service or revenue collections.

These are all non-revenue generating managerial positions and we're working internally to absorb the workload.

Okay.