Comptroller Analysis Reviews Mayor’s Preliminary Budget Impacts to City Services

 

Finds shortsighted cuts to CUNY, libraries, alternatives-to-incarceration; key agencies (HPD, Sanitation, Parks) facing critical challenges; and stronger budget discipline needed in areas of long-term overspending including uniformed overtime and claims

Ahead of the City Council’s FY 2025 Preliminary Budget hearings, New York City Comptroller Brad Lander released an analysis of the Mayor’s budget cuts and their impact on City services. The report, The Bottom Lines, identifies areas where short-sighted programmatic cuts and longer-term agency budget and staffing reductions have resulted in measurable declines in critical service to New Yorkers. The report also identifies areas where the City can better manage budgeting and spending — uniformed overtime, crash claims and Carter cases.  

“Despite last week’s announcement cancelling the third round of PEGs this fiscal year, the Mayor’s preliminary budget cuts CUNY, libraries, cultural institutions, and vital re-entry programs that keep New Yorkers safe, and it fails to address critical challenges facing our Housing, Sanitation, and Parks Departments,” said Comptroller Brad Lander. “A better way to address our fiscal challenges is to confront long-term areas of overspending, like uniformed overtime, crash claims, and Carter cases.”   

Late last year, the Adams Administration announced a requirement that agencies submit plans for the three Programs to Eliminate the Gap (PEGs), each totaling about five percent of city spending, as well as restrictions on contractual spending and a citywide hiring freeze in order to address significant budget deficits. While the City since rolled back some of the cuts (scaling-back the PEG in January, and cancelling the upcoming April PEG), the vast majority of the cuts from the first two rounds of PEGs remain in the Preliminary Budget.  

The Bottom Lines reviews the impacts:  

Shortsighted Programmatic Cuts 

• CUNY: Over the past two years, the City has reduced its annual funding for CUNY’s community colleges by $95 million.​ Cuts will hit colleges unevenly; 9 institutions unable to achieve budget targets began making midyear cuts ranging from eliminated programming, increased class sizes, or further reductions in faculty and staff.
• Libraries: Libraries provide New Yorkers with critical access to knowledge, resources, high-quality internet, and programming. ​The Library system’s overall budget accounts for just 0.4% of the City’s total expense budget. As a result of the 5% cut in the operating subsidy given to Library systems, saving a meager $24 million for the City, neighborhood libraries across the city have had to close on Saturday or Sunday, eliminating 7-day service where is previously existed. Rising library card registrations show an increased demand for library services, but budget cuts are forcing libraries to close their doors more days of the week.
• Alternatives to Incarceration & Detention: The Office of Criminal Justice (OCJ) manages alternatives to incarceration (ATI) and alternatives to detention (ATD) programs, which maintain and improve a fair and equitable justice system while reducing the City’s jail population. OCJ will be cut Alternatives to Incarceration programming by 12% and Supervised Release by 11%. Re-Entry Services will see an immediate 25% reduction. These cuts total $27.8 million in the next fiscal year.​
• Students in Temporary Housing: 13% of students in public schools live in temporary housing. As the Department of Education (DOE) faces the expiration of federal COVID stimulus funds, these cuts impact students in temporary housing. 

• • Community Coordinator positions will disappear with a $12 million cut ($9 million in expiring stimulus funding, $3 million in unallocated city dollars) as an additional 175 new shelters, HERRCs, and respite centers have opened.  
  • $77 million (both expiring stimulus funding and non-baselined city money) in community school funding, representing 155 programs — was not included in the FY25 preliminary budget. 

Agencies Facing Critical Challenges 

• Housing and Preservation Development: ​The HPD budget has been reduced by 7%. To effectively tackle the City’s affordable housing crisis, the City must ensure HPD has additional resources to clear the backlog of affordable housing projects, develop and train new staff, and expand the City’s social housing footprint. ​Read more about these challenges in Building Blocks of Change.
• Sanitation: DSNY cancelled or reduced many critical programs, including community & home organics collection, supplemental litter basket service, lot cleaning and planning for the future of solid waste. 500 positions are eliminated due to hiring freezes and service reductions. ​Current cuts to DSNY’s composting and litter basket programs threaten to worsen the cleanliness of city streets, undermine rat mitigation efforts, and stymie the progress made toward increasing organics diversion putting the City’s 0x30 goals directly at risk. ​
• Parks: While Parks saved the most through hiring freezes and vacancy reductions, Parks also permanently eliminated some programming including life-saving swim classes. In total, Parks loses over 650 jobs. Parks may suffer from maintenance issues, reduced hours and closed facilities, and cutbacks on programs which could drive down New Yorkers’ access to and use of parks. ​ 

Instead of these cuts and critical challenges to agencies, the report identifies areas where the City can drive down longstanding cost overruns. Better management of uniformed overtime, crash claims, and Carter cases provide real opportunities for the City to save dollars without diminishing services.  

 Stronger Budget Discipline Required 

• Uniformed Overtime: Uniformed agencies, particularly the Police Department, routinely spend far more money for overtime than agreed to by the Mayor and Council in the budget. For example, the Comptroller projected in December that the city was underbudgeting Uniformed Overtime by $600 million including $450 million by the NYPD.​ Much of the overspending is for planned events. Read more in Overtime Overview.
• Crash Claims: Payouts for crash claims sharply rose over a decade; the total payout for crashes nearly doubled from $89 million to $174 million comparing 2014 to 2023, and the average payout rose from $150,000 to $300,000. A 20% reduction in the claims budget entirely covers the cuts libraries faced in the most recent budget. Read more in Wreckless Spending.
• Carter Cases: Money paid to settle due process claims for students with disabilities to receive legally mandated services where DOE has failed to do so grew from $131 million in 2012 to over $1 billion in 2023. ​Educational Services, covering professionals like speech, behavioral & physical therapists, contributed most significantly to the growth of cost from just $33 million in 2012 to $480 million in 2023. Often parents must find private providers because DOE does not provide enough specialists, especially in lower income, Black & Hispanic districts and DOE is required to pay for services that are often many times the cost of city employee rates.​ Read more in Course Correction. 

Read the report The Bottom Lines here.