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Comptroller Releases Second Annual People’s Financial Report


stringer table meeting mwbe 1

Comptroller Stringer (photo: @scottmstringer)


The New York City operating budget is an $83.4 billion behemoth, with all the complexity you would expect in a spending plan for a city of 8.5 million residents and many millions more in tourists. Despite their importance, the city budget and other municipal financial documents are not easy to understand or use. But, there have been a series of recent efforts by elected officials to make the city’s finances more open and navigable.

In that vein, Comptroller Scott Stringer, the city’s chief financial officer, created the Popular Annual Financial Report, which was released for the first time last year. On Friday, Stringer is releasing the second annual report meant “to present the City’s financial affairs in a more concise, straight-forward and simplified manner.”

This PAFR covers the city’s 2016 fiscal year, which ended June 30, and breaks down for the public the city’s revenues, expenses, budget, and capital projects. It is about 25 pages of colorful graphs and charts, along with plain-language explanations.

It has sections for the city’s economic forecast and a look at tax revenue growth. It details “Revenues: where does the money come from?” and “Expenses: where does the money go?” followed by other sections, many of which include pie charts and bar graphs.

tax revenues fy 2016 stringer pafr

It is “a user-friendly companion” to the city’s other financial documents, according to Stringer’s statement introducing the PAFR. It complements the city’s Comprehensive Annual Financial Report, which, as its name suggests, is a more lengthy and complex document.

The popular report is “designed to present the City’s financial affairs in a more concise, straight-forward and simplified manner,” Stringer says, and it stands alongside “other important transparency tools, including our interactive CheckbookNYC website” to give “New Yorkers unprecedented access into the inner workings of our government.”

The comptroller’s PAFR tells the user, for example, that in the most recent fiscal year, 2016, “expenses for governmental activities (including all related personnel and applicable pension and benefit costs) increased by over $14 billion from FY 2015 to $86.2 billion. These expenses increased significantly due to higher pension expenses, which was a result of changes in actuarial assumptions related to mortality tables. Additionally, collective bargaining increases resulted in higher expenses overall.”

This statement is followed by a graph and a chart showing expenses in detail.

governmental activities expenses fy 2016 stringer pafr

Above another detailed graph, the PAFR tells the user, “Although 25 agencies engage in some form of capital spending, the City’s capital budget is largely concentrated among 13 budget agencies. Collectively these agencies accounted for approximately 94 percent of all FY 2016 capital commitments.”

Capital spending is for building physical infrastructure. As the PAFR graph clearly shows, the top capital spenders among those agencies are the Department of Education, Department of Environmental Protection, and Department of Transportation.

The PAFR also includes snapshot comparisons of New York City to other cities, including Chicago and Philadelphia, on metrics like tourism. And, it includes a face-book of sorts of top city elected officials.

“My aim is to provide citizens, businesses, and community groups with topline figures on revenues and expenses, as well as a snapshot of our City’s local economy,” Stringer’s introductory PAFR statement says. The first PAFR, last year’s, won the Government Finance Officers Association’s Award for Outstanding Achievement in Popular Annual Financial Reporting.

That first PAFR is not easily findable at the comptroller’s website, which is home to dozens of reports, as one might expect of the city’s chief financial officer. Asked how Stringer can encourage more New Yorkers to engage with the easy-to-use resource he is providing, a spokesperson for the comptroller said, “When we’re transparent, and we work hard at being transparent, New Yorkers benefit. Now more than ever, people need to be engaged at the local, state, and national level. It’s our hope that we can deliver the kinds of tools that help New Yorkers better understand their government.”

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by Ben Max, Gotham Gazette
     

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Bill Aims to Ensure Heat is On When It Should Be


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Ritchie Torres (photo: John McCarten)


City Council Member Ritchie Torres will introduce a bill on Thursday that aims to ensure landlords follow the law and keep the heat on for tenants when it should be.

Torres’ bill, being introduced in partnership with Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, would require landlords of buildings with more than three units to install tamper-proof heat sensors in the living room of each unit. These “temperature reporting devices” would be monitored by tenants, landlords, and the city’s housing agency, the Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD).

The model for such a device was developed by Heat Seek, a winner of the city’s 2014 BigApps competition. With their legislation, Torres and Adams want to make sure that all tenants have heat when they are supposed to, and to create a new deterrent for landlords who might abuse heat settings as a way to drive tenants out of rent-stabilized housing.

“The bill is based on a recognition that laws governing heat and hot water, which are among the most common complaints among tenants, can be the hardest to enforce,” Torres said in an interview on Wednesday.

“It's bringing housing code enforcement into the 21st century,” Torres said. “And it’s allowing us to hold unscrupulous owners accountable, and drive down the rate of heat and hot water violations in New York City.”

Working with Heat Seek, tenants, and housing lawyers, Adams recently announced a lawsuit against one large Brooklyn landlord whose Brownsville building had a number of heat complaints.

Landlords must provide tenants with heat and hot water when the outdoor temperature falls below 55 degrees during the day and below 40 degrees at night during the October 1-May 31 “heat season.” HPD tracks violators.

“My message to landlords across New York City is that we’re watching; don’t harm your tenants’ quality of life all because of greed,” Adams said in a statement. “We are using cool technology to warm the homes of Brooklynites, while putting bad-acting landlords on the hot seat for their harassing behavior. I am proud to work with Council Member Torres, the innovative team at Heat Seek NYC, our incredible legal advocates, as well as courageous tenants who are standing up for their housing rights.”

As originally drafted, if passed by the Council and signed by the Mayor, the provisions of the bill would go into effect for January 1, 2018. It would require rules to be drafted and contract procurement by HPD (Heat Seek would not be guaranteed the contract for the devices). The bill will be heard in the Committee on Housing and Buildings, which is chaired by Council Member Jumaane Williams. Torres chairs the Committee on Public Housing, but the bill does not apply to the New York City Housing Authority, which is separate from the private landlords the bill is targeting.

There are already amendments to the bill being discussed. Most significantly, according to Torres’ office, the bill is likely to be changed so that the temperature monitors are required of landlords with repeated violations related to providing heat, not of all landlords. The idea will be to identify when there has been “willful deprivation of heat and hot water” so that HPD can then monitor it and ensure that landlords are not repeatedly violating the law or driving out tenants. At times, landlords are accused of not providing heat but then raise the heat for HPD inspections. Sensors would allow for regular detection.

Torres' office is looking at perhaps coordinating with the Public Advocate' "worst landlord" list that is released each year as those involved seek to identify negligent landlords or landlords that harass tenants.

According to data provided by Torres’ office from HPD, last heat season HPD inspectors attempted 117,767 heat-related inspections and wrote 7,548 heat-related violations. HPD completed $2.7 million in heat-related emergency repairs that was charged to building owners and filed 3,151 heat cases in court, collecting $1.7 million in civil penalties against more than 3,100 properties.

Heat Seek is looking forward to expanding its work. In a statement, the company said, “Heat Seek is grateful for Councilman Torres’s and President Adams’s forward-thinking approach to solving problems experienced by many New Yorkers. We know that underheated apartments are too common for our neighbors, and we believe that sensor technology has the capacity to change the way landlords provide services for their tenants and how our city enforces the Housing Code."

Tenants are encouraged to call 311 to report issues with their heat and their landlords. Some tenants have taken to keeping a "heat log" but the tamper-proof devices from Heat Seek can provide more indisputable evidence.

“I think most landlords make good effort to comply with the law,” Torres said, but it will be important to monitor and punish “actors who have a consistent pattern of heat and hot water violations.”

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by Ben Max, Gotham Gazette
     

Read more by this writer.

De Blasio Fails to Explain His Support for Limits on Groups Like Campaign for One New York


de blasio choices

Bill de Blasio (photo: Ed Reed/Mayor's Office)


The City Council will pass a bill this week to put significant limits on the donations that political nonprofits aligned with elected officials can accept from entities with city business. Mayor Bill de Blasio intends to sign the bill, sponsored by Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, into law.

While she has been a close ally of the mayor, in crafting the bill Mark-Viverito condemned one of the most controversial aspects of de Blasio’s tenure, The Campaign for One New York. And in supporting the bill, de Blasio is giving at least implicit acknowledgement that there are problems with The Campaign for One New York’s fundraising practices. Created and run by de Blasio allies, the nonprofit advocacy group took in millions of dollars in donations from entities with city business, chiefly labor unions and real estate developers, leading to allegations of a “pay-to-play” culture and law enforcement investigations.

During a Tuesday press conference, de Blasio did not directly answer questions from Gotham Gazette about his support for the bill and acknowledgement of problems with Campaign for One New York fundraising, instead defending the organization, which was shut down amid controversy. After the press conference, de Blasio’s chief spokesperson clarified that the mayor supports the bill because it helps get money out of politics.

The new regulations outlined in Mark-Viverito’s bill would limit donations from those with city business “to non-governmental entities controlled by a local elected official or their agents.” The new limits will match those that are part of the city’s public-matching campaign finance system, wherein entities with city business can give only $400 to a candidate’s campaign.

Thus, the bill the City Council will pass on Thursday and de Blasio will sign into law at some later date will create regulations that would have made the Campaign for One New York subject to much stricter fundraising rules, likely crippling its ability to raise the major sums of money that funded its main effort: a campaign to push for state funding of pre-K. A great deal of the money that Campaign for One New York spent went to political consultants close to de Blasio who ran the pre-K campaign.

A spokesperson for Mark-Viverito confirmed that the bill shows a belief by the speaker that the way The Campaign for One New York did business was not appropriate and that it is important to put limits on the fundraising that such groups can do from entities with city business. The bill also requires donor disclosure, something de Blasio’s group did voluntarily. Mark-Viverito’s spokesperson said the speaker will address the bill on Thursday before it is passed.

Mark-Viverito was not present at a November 21 hearing on the bill, despite being its lead sponsor. The Council’s standards and ethics committee will pass the bill on Wednesday before the full Council votes Thursday.

De Blasio has been criticized for what some call a “pay-to-play” culture, whereby he created a new place to give large sums of money for those looking to curry favor with him and his administration. City Comptroller Scott Stringer has called The Campaign for One New York a “slush fund.”

The question of whether donors were promised or received government favors in exchange for their donations is the subject of ongoing law enforcement investigation. No one has been charged with a crime and de Blasio maintains that he and his allies acted legally and ethically.

The city’s campaign finance system has it’s doing-business limit of $400 in place in order to reduce real or perceived conflicts of interest.

On Tuesday, Gotham Gazette asked the mayor if by supporting much stricter donation limits to elected official-aligned nonprofits he is acknowledging that the way The Campaign for One New York’s did business was problematic.

“No,” de Blasio said, before giving an extensive answer that did not really address the question.

“We worked on the bill, we had concerns that some issues in the bill had to be carefully drawn so as to not exclude a lot of other types of activity, for example the effort that was put together to try and get the Democratic convention or any other major economic development opportunity for the city,” he said. “But no, we again, I think we just have a difference...We followed the law, that’s what governs here, the law. We not only followed the law we went to the Conflict of Interest Board to ask for guidance about the proper interpretation of the law and we disclosed all our donors, which you all know, there are many many organizations that do not disclose their donors, including some related to elected officials.”

During the same answer, de Blasio went on to explain the context of the work done by The Campaign for One New York, chiefly in 2014, citing opposition to his agenda from charter-school-backing hedge-fund managers. “I know we did everything right,” he then said, “and it can be looked at all day long and you’re gonna find we did everything right, but it’s not worth the distraction, we’re perfectly comfortable, I’m perfectly comfortable signing the bill.”

Gotham Gazette then clarified the question wasn’t about admission of breaking the law or even conflicts of interest guidance, but about his support for new fundraising regulations on elected-official-aligned nonprofits, asking the mayor, “if you’re now saying these groups should have limits on the fundraising they can do with entities with city business, aren’t you acknowledging that it was a problem to do that [with The Campaign for One New York]?”

“I’m only acknowledging that it became a big distraction, even though everything was done properly and even though we achieved the goals we set out to achieve, which were the pre-K plan and the affordable housing plan, specifically the mandatory inclusionary housing legislation,” de Blasio said. “I have eyes to see if something becomes too much of a distraction you move on and you do other things,” de Blasio added, again giving his latest explanation for why he decided that The Campaign for One New York should be shut down (he originally said it was closing up only because it had accomplished its goals).

While de Blasio did not answer the question directly, his spokesperson provided more clarity by email when asked.

“The mayor believes in public financing and getting money out of politics. But we didn’t have that system, so he played by the rules to ensure that his agenda and his fights for things like pre-k and affordable housing weren't unilaterally disarmed,” wrote Eric Phillips, de Blasio’s press secretary. “He would vote for public financing too, but that doesn’t mean he’ll quit fundraising until such a perfect world exists.”

Gotham Gazette continued to push for an answer about support for the new doing-business fundraising limits signaling at least implicit acknowledgement that the extent to which The Campaign for One New York raised money from entities with city business was inappropriate.

“These bills look to get money out of politics,” Phillips wrote. “Just as public financing legislation would. Both scenarios recognize that it's a better, more inclusive, fair system when money isn't in the equation. It's not a recognition that either scenario - regular contributions or CONY contributions - are specifically, unavoidably or automatically nefarious.”

The question isn’t simply about nefarious intentions or not, it is about real or perceived conflicts of interest or undue influence that large donations to pet causes or campaigns can have on city officials. These are the reasons behind the $400 doing-business limit on candidate campaign donations.

“He’s supporting it because he supports getting money out of politics,” Phillips wrote.

The bill will be discussed further on Wednesday and Thursday at the City Council. Mark-Viverito was in attendance for much of Tuesday’s press conference as de Blasio announced a new program to boost the life sciences sector in New York City. She left before the “off-topic” section of the press conference, where members of the media ask the mayor questions about a variety of issues.

Asked by a reporter from Politico New York whether he has a sense when the investigations into his behavior will be completed, de Blasio said, “I don’t know when it’ll end. I think the people are waiting for answers, certainly, but I don’t know when they’ll end.”

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by Ben Max, Gotham Gazette
     

Read more by this writer.



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