Comptroller Levine: Relief on property tax and baselined programs, but gap closed with one-shots
Levine expresses relief that the executive budget no longer calls for property tax increases or rainy day drawdowns, and praises baselined funding for DOE, right to counsel, libraries, and Fair Fares. However, he warns the budget relies on $6.1 billion in one-time measures including pension re-amortization, accounting adjustments, and delayed class size implementation.
Wage growth here has been strong, but here again, there are two stories.
The highest paid industries, where workers make an average of $225,000 annually, saw wages grow by 5.7% over the past year.
For the two-thirds of New York City private sector workers in lower-paying jobs, real wages have declined.
What does all this mean for our budget?
I'm relieved that today we're reviewing an executive budget which no longer calls for a property tax increase and no longer drains our rainy day fund.
I'm also pleased that, after years of uncertainty, the plan baselines funding for a variety of important programs.
This includes 269 baseline for DOE and FY27, for technology, the Learning to Work program, IESP support, and a partial fix to school custodial budgets.
Additional baseline items include right to counsel, library subsidies, and foster care contracts, as well as an additional $25 million for fare fares.
How is it that given the dire warnings about
our budget gap that I and others issued in January, we've been able to make so much progress in recent months.
By far the biggest driver is the surge in city revenues, both collected and forecasted, which totaled nearly $7 billion since the November plan.
We reached a much needed increase in funding from Albany.
Which we are grateful to the governor and legislature for providing.
And the mayor, to his credit, has committed to a number of efficiencies and savings measures.
But all this was not enough to fully close the gap.
The budget is in fact balanced with a great deal of temporary fixes.
The plan relies on a slew of one-time measures and short-term savings, which altogether total $6.1 million in FY27.
These are measures which, by definition, will not be available next year.
They include $2.3 billion from the re-amortization of the unfunded pension liability.
$1.6 billion in accounting adjustments to prior year accrued expenses, in addition to the $500 million already budgeted in the preliminary budget.
Nearly $1 billion from the more gradual timeline to achieve the class size mandate and from the clawback of H&H's share of pension re-amortization savings.
$200 million in one-time lower subsidy to the MTA, in addition to the $500 million already included in the preliminary budget.
Beyond the one-time measures, the executive