Deputy Speaker Williams questions Comptroller on reserves vs investment trade-offs and racial equity

What objective measures or triggers should we look at to determine when accumulating additional reserves

becomes less valuable than investing those dollars into various things that we care about, like workforce development or digital literacy or other interventions?

that could reduce AIs related economic and workforce disruption in the first place?

Yeah, it's a fair question.

And I think considering the uncertainty ahead, building the reserves really isn't a choice.

It's why I want an actual formula there.

But I am all in for rethinking our retraining in the city, including from K-12 and CUNY, where we're giving people very limited education in the kind of emerging AI skills that employers are asking for.

I talk to employers all the time.

I talk to CEOs all the time.

It's part of my job.

And they're not so much telling me yet that they are slowing down hiring, although I feel that may be beginning, and I can talk about that from anecdotal evidence.

But they are saying to me unambiguously they're hiring people with AI skills now.

And I look at what we're doing in K-12 and what we're doing at CUNY, and I feel like we are way behind in pivoting the curriculum.

So I think we need to move now quickly, and I would love to work with you on that.

Okay, just two quick more questions.

Quick more quick questions.

So as you know, New York City agencies are now required to develop and implement racial equity plans that are supposed to be attuned to the budget.

Yet one of the persistent challenges is ensuring that those plans are reflected in the actual budget decisions and resource allocation.

As the city's chief fiscal watchdog, what role do you believe your office should play in measuring where

Are their agency spending aligned with their racial equity commitments?

And are there additional tools, reporting requirements, or accountability mechanisms you believe are needed to ensure these plans result in tangible outcomes rather than simply compliance exercises?

You've been leading on this, Deputy Speaker, and I really am grateful for that.

The city has a very, very long and shameful history of underinvesting in communities in need, in communities of color.

This is well documented, and we don't want that to happen on our watch.

And so we do need to ask very serious questions about where and how our money is spent and who is benefiting, and is there equity, geographic equity, racial equity, and more.

And I would love for my office to be a resource here.

We've talked some about this.

I would love to find ways to help make sure that this information is accounted for and public so we can do the right thing here.