Budget Director Jacques Jiha (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)
The New York City Council on Tuesday began its examination of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s $92.3 billion preliminary budget for the 2022 fiscal year, which begins July 1. The hearing was the first of many that will take place over the next few weeks as the Council digs into the mayor’s final budget plan of his eight-year tenure and as key questions remain about the city’s fiscal future.
The coronavirus pandemic stripped the city of billions in tax revenue, creating significant budget gaps for the next several fiscal years. The city’s fiscal picture has been fluid and uncertain, with billions of dollars of federal aid already flowing to the city and more expected, and a mix of lower-than-expected property tax revenue but higher-than-expected personal income tax revenue. Given the excellent overall economic pre-covid picture, the city had increased spending dramatically but did also have billions in reserves, however inefficient for the scale of the crisis that has unfolded.
The pandemic’s impact and the change of federal leadership in January forced the mayor to craft a cautious, worst-case scenario budget that didn’t take into account any additional federal stimulus funds that the city might receive under President Biden and a Democratic Congress, even though that is all but assured. De Blasio’s preliminary budget, released in January, predicts a big drop in tax revenues in the next fiscal year, draws deeply from the city’s reserves, relies on $1 billion in unspecified labor savings, and foresees recurring budget gaps of more than $4 billion in each of the next three fiscal years.
There also remains the risk of $2.4 billion in cuts and costs shifts across the current and next fiscal year potentially imposed by the state, which were not included in the mayor’s budget proposal but are among the points of contention as the state crafts its own crisis budget ahead of its April 1 deadline. As part of that picture, the mayor and others in the city are concerned that Governor Andrew Cuomo may further “supplant” federal funds meant for the city, meaning the state holds back hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to the city based on federal funds of the same amount flowing to the five boroughs -- this already occurred to the tune of $700 million, de Blasio said during his testimony at the state Legislature last month, and the governor is threatening another $800 million.
But, there has been some cause for optimism. The city expects to receive as much as $5.6 billion in federal aid through the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act currently being negotiated in Congress. “This budget isn’t nearly as grim as I thought it would be,” said City Council Speaker Corey Johnson, in his opening remarks at Tuesday’s hearing. With Democratic control over the federal government, “It looks like we’ll be getting the help we need,” he said.
Yet Johnson worried that the city is going to “just do the bare minimum” with federal funds, stressing the need to protect the social safety net and critical services for youth, seniors, and families. “I don’t want us to go back to normal. I want us to work toward a new, more equitable future,” he said.
As Council Member Daniel Dromm, chair of the Council’s finance committee, noted in his remarks at Tuesday’s hearing, the mayor’s budget also does not include about $730.5 million for City Council discretionary funding and to restore one-time cuts and fund programs added last year at the Council’s behest. It also underfunds items like expected NYPD overtime, special education, and student transportation, he said.
In his testimony, Jacques Jiha, director of the Mayor’s Office of Management and Budget, outlined the preliminary budget, which includes $885 million in new spending between the current and next fiscal year, $2 billion in savings across both years, and an increase in the ten-year capital strategy -- a separate budget plan that relies on bonding, though the debt service is paid for in the annual operating budget.
Jiha sounded a warning about the state cuts, which include $500 million slashed from the Health+Hospitals System across both fiscal years. “I want to emphasize that the state wants to cut resources in the midst of the pandemic from a hospital system that has led the fight to save lives and protect New Yorkers from COVID-19 since last Spring,” he said.
But he too was positive that federal funds will bolster the city and that an aggressive vaccination program will help boost the economy and, in turn, city revenue. “[W]e firmly believe New York City will recover faster than many people expect as social distancing requirements ease, the stimulus impacts are felt, and consumers unleash pent up demand,” he said. “As this happens, workers will return to their offices, Broadway shows will sell out again, tourism will flourish, and hotels will fill with guests. This is a resilient city, and we will be back better and stronger than before.”
Under questioning, Jiha could not provide specificity to the Council on several aspects of the preliminary budget proposal. For instance, since it did not weigh the amount of federal aid, he could not say where the city planned to spend potential dollars. “If there is no aid coming from the federal government, we'll continue to do what we've been doing, which is continual aggressive, savings programs,” he told Speaker Johnson. If aid does come through, which is more than likely, he said the administration would work with the Council on resource allocation. “At this point in time, we have not made any decision one way or another,” he said.
Johnson said the budget proposal seems “short-sighted” as he noted that it pulls $1.15 billion from city reserves, relies on labor savings that have yet to be outlined, and expects large budget gaps while the future of the economy seems uncertain. It does not identify enough efficiencies or long-term costs savings, he said, though the mayor has promised more agency belt-tightening. “I don't want us to be in a situation in a year or two where social safety net programs and essential services like trash pickup are on the chopping block again,” he said.
Jiha insisted that the administration is continually looking for savings but did not say how the labor savings would be achieved. Any savings program, he said, “should be implemented gradually. Otherwise, it could prove counterproductive.” He also said that if the city should have enough resources, after receiving federal aid, the administration would work to rebuild the depleted reserves.
As part of the mayor’s budget savings plan, the administration has instituted a headcount reduction program that mandates three employees must leave through attrition before one hire is made, with exceptions for positions related to safety, public health, uniformed workers, teachers, and revenue-generating jobs. After growing the city workforce by more than 30,000 workers until last year, de Blasio has reduced headcount by about 7,000 since January 2020.
But when pressed by Dromm, Jiha could not provide a breakdown of how the administration would achieve the nearly 5,000 employee reduction under that plan. “[W]e want to have as much flexibility as possible when we are dealing with agencies,” Jiha said. “We are still in the midst of a pandemic so we must be very nimble if we have to give some agency some leeway in case there is an emergency.”
Throughout the rest of the hearing, Council members sought answers on a broad array of issues. Council Member Helen Rosenthal, chair of the subcommittee on the capital budget, called for more transparency on which capital projects would resume this month, as announced by the mayor on Monday – Jiha promised to provide a list to the Council. Council Member Ben Kallos, chair of the contracts committee, pushed back against cuts to an indirect cost initiative for nonprofit human service providers and critiqued the use of outside consultants. Jiha said the administration would work to restore funds for those indirect costs if the city’s budget picture improves. He also said the administration is reviewing different agencies to assess where consultants are necessary, conceding that they can at times cost the city more money than a full-time employee.
Dromm pushed for a more realistic estimation of special education funding. Council Member Diana Ayala questioned the status of a pilot program to fund mental health crisis response teams. Council Member Margaret Chin called for more senior center funding. Council Members Peter Koo and Vanessa Gibson advocated for restoring previous cuts made to the Departments of Parks and Recreation and Sanitation. Council Member Darma Diaz sought more details on funds allocated to domestic violence services. Council Member Keith Powers asked for financial assistance for cultural institutions. Jiha agreed with the members’ concerns, saying the administration would provide answers or funding where possible depending on how the city’s budget prospects evolve.
Cautious optimism was the refrain of the day. Comptroller Scott Stringer, in his own testimony, said, “2021 began on a much more hopeful note than how we ended 2020, with a new president taking office, and vaccines for COVID-19 finally available. But the challenges of the past year aren’t behind us. Not by a long shot.”
He pointed to the $2.5 billion expected drop in property tax revenue next fiscal year, the mass closure of small businesses, high unemployment, and the city’s rocky vaccine rollout. “Just because we’ve closed the FY22 gap doesn’t mean we don’t have work to do to get our own fiscal house in order for the future,” he said, citing what he considers wasteful spending on homelessness, incarceration, and mental health programs without positive outcomes.
He urged the administration to use federal funds wisely. “Stimulus money is temporary. It will give us some help this year and next, maybe even a little the year after that. But after that, it is gone,” he said. “We need to strategically use these federal funds to relieve the suffering of New Yorkers, to jump-start our economic recovery and to lay the groundwork for a new, fairer economy.”
As is the case each year, the administration tends to be more conservative in its revenue forecasts. Ronnie Lowenstein, director of the Independent Budget Office, a nonpartisan city agency that is not under the mayor’s control, estimated to the Council that the city will end the current fiscal year with a $3.6 billion surplus, $258 million more than the administration’s expectations.
Lowenstein pointed to the positive developments at the federal level, including the next stimulus package and additional FEMA reimbursements announced by the Biden administration. But she also raised concerns about the unspecified labor savings, the status of federal funding for the MTA, cuts from Albany and the progression of the pandemic. “With these and a number of other critical variables, the city’s economic and fiscal future remains precarious,” she said.
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by Samar Khurshid, senior reporter, Gotham Gazette
@samarkhurshid @GothamGazette
Mayor de Blasio announces Mayor's Fund fundraising (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)
One year after the de Blasio administration established the COVID-19 Emergency Relief Fund to support some of the individuals and businesses most acutely impacted by the pandemic, the Mayor's Fund to Advance New York City has spent approximately $62 million on programs ranging from one-time payments to undocumented immigrants to grants for survivors of domestic violence. Though a significant sum was raised and moved out the door to key causes, some signature programs, like the domestic violence survivor grants, had a much smaller reach than others, like purchasing food for hospital workers.
The city began raising private dollars for the covid emergency fund last March when hospitals were filling up, businesses were shuttering, and more than 1 million New Yorkers lost their jobs. The emergency relief effort, part of the Mayor's Fund to Advance New York City, a charity run by the mayoral administration to support special programs, has raised a little over $63 million in sum. The emergency fund has allowed the city to disburse money outside the city budget, which has been deeply constrained by pandemic-related revenue losses, and with less red tape and fewer strings attached, a lifeline for what de Blasio has called an "endless need."
"It's the worst economic crisis in 90 years, since the Great Depression -- that's what we're dealing with right now -- and there just aren't enough resources to go around to help people," de Blasio said at a press briefing last July when he and First Lady Chirlane McCray, who de Blasio named to chair the Mayor’s Fund back in 2014, announced the fund had raised more than $50 million. "We've got to find more anywhere we can so that folks can get back on their feet."
At the time the city had raised $54.5 million from over 9,500 contributors, including over $5 million in in-kind donations. The money and other items of value, much of which came through large-scale public-private partnerships, was carved up to go to some of the most urgent cases -- "healthcare workers and essential staff; local small businesses; displaced hourly workers, including immigrant workers; and families, youth, and other vulnerable New Yorkers," according to a June 30 audit by the accounting firm RSM. At the end of the year, 299 donors had each given over $5,000.
By February, the emergency relief fund had raised a total of $63.6 million and had spent or committed $62.1 million, according to the mayor's office in an update provided to Gotham Gazette upon request.
While the Mayor's Fund, and by extension the COVID-19 Emergency Relief Fund, falls under the New York State Charities Law and IRS regulations, it is almost entirely separate from the city budget and as such is not subject to oversight by the City Council. The fund must submit financial statements to the city comptroller but its spending falls outside New York's government procurement rules. That position makes it easier for the city to move the money quickly and with discretion, but it also limits accountability.
After several requests over the course of weeks, the mayor's office finally on Tuesday pointed Gotham Gazette a list of many donors to the emergency relief fund as highlighted by one major foundation funder of the immigrant-relief effort. The list includes those who had given at least $5,000, with many prominent individuals, foundations, and corporations included. The full list of donors to the Mayor’s Fund for the emergency relief effort has still not been provided.
The largest chunk of funding -- $21.1 million spent by early February for services in immigrant communities -- was supported mostly by an initial $20 million donation from Open Society Foundations. It was intended for one-time payments to up to 20,000 undocumented New Yorkers and their families who could not access federal stimulus money through the CARES Act, according to a press release last April. According to the fund website, the Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs partnered with 34 community-based organizations to reach over 76,000 individuals without CARES aid or unemployment insurance.
A July 14 press release states additional funding came from SOMOS Community Care, Trinity Church Wall Street, Amalgamated Bank, and Robin Hood for a burial assistance program for immigrant families. In total, the fund raised $22.9 million for immigrant services, according to a mayoral spokesperson on February 3.
Another large portion of the larger sum -- $19.8 million -- went to food services for frontline hospital workers and other essential personnel, the spokesperson said. The program, known as NYC Healthcare Heroes, came through partnerships with the Debra and Leon Black Family, Aramark, Robin Hood, and the American Red Cross, to provide 400,000 packages with meals and cleaning products, according to the July 14 release.
Another $400,000 went to New York City Health + Hospitals, the city's public hospital network, for PPE. It came from "Cedar Mills LLC in honor of Peg Broadbent, former CFO of Jefferies Group LLC who died due to complications from COVID-19," states the release, referring to the multinational investment bank Jefferies.
The COVID-19 Emergency Relief Fund also contributed $7.4 million to Summer Bridge 2020, part of the city's Summer Youth Employment Program.
But other heralded programs received far less from the fund.
At the July announcement of the $54.5 million fundraising milestone, McCray highlighted the importance of one-time "micro grants" for individuals experiencing domestic violence, which is said to have spiked during the pandemic.
"Domestic violence is too often minimized or ignored, and the pandemic has brought new horrors for those who shelter in place with an abusive partner," McCray said. "Violence inside the home has a devastating and long-term effect on children and families for generations. These micro-grants will help mitigate some of the safety, economic and housing challenges exacerbated by COVID-19."
Calls to New York's domestic violence hotline from April to October increased 19% over the year before, according to McCray in an op-ed last fall.
By mid-February, the city had distributed grants to 377 clients of an average size of $1,200, according to the mayor's office, amounting to roughly $450,000 total. In a February 3 email, a City Hall spokesperson said $664,000 of the COVID-19 Emergency Relief Fund had gone to the program. No other funds were allocated in the city budget.
In order to be eligible to receive a grant under criteria designed by Sanctuary for Families (SFF), a domestic violence service provider, clients had to be engaged with their own service providers who were responsible for filing for the grants with SFF. Applicants had to demonstrate that the grant was for a one-time expense and that other public support couldn't cover it.
McCray also highlighted the Restaurant Revitalization Program, which provided short-term payroll aid for restaurants committed to paying minimum wage on top of tips. The program, created by NYC Opportunity and the Human Resources Administration in partnership with One Fair Wage, a national wage advocacy group, has reached 99 restaurants with grants up to $30,000, according to the program’s website. Of the over $2.3 million awarded, $1.4 million has come from the COVID-19 Emergency Relief Fund.
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by Ethan Geringer-Sameth, reporter, Gotham Gazette
@GeringerSameth @GothamGazette
Voting! (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)
The New York City Campaign Finance Board (CFB) held a public meeting of its Voter Assistance Advisory Committee (VAAC) last week to discuss the ongoing process of ranked-choice voting outreach and education. The CFB is tasked with those efforts by the recent city Charter change approved by voters in 2019 that is ushering ranked-choice voting into effect for party primary and special elections for city government positions, with the first implementation happening this year. There are several special elections happening in the months leading up to the June party primaries, which will feature a full slate of elections for citywide, borough-wide, and City Council seats.
CFB Assistant Executive Director for Public Affairs Eric Friedman hosted, and was joined by VAAC members Daniele Gerard and Mazeda Uddin, along with other officials from the Campaign Finance Board and DemocracyNYC, which is directly part of the mayor’s office.
Xamayla Rose, deputy public advocate for civic and community empowerment, represented the office of Public Advocate Jumaane Williams (who is an ex officio member of VAAC), while Perry Grossman of the NYCLU also participated.
Allie Swatek, director of policy and research at the CFB, gave a presentation describing the group’s efforts to educate voters about the new voting system, which allows voters to rank up to five candidates for each seat by order of preference. If no candidate receives a majority of the first-choice votes, the last-place candidate is eliminated and that candidate’s voters are redistributed based on their second choices. The process continues until a winner with a majority is declared.
The CFB’s voter education and outreach has been organized under five ”buckets,” Swatek said, “train-the-trainer,” voter trainings, panels and events, media coverage, and direct outreach.
The first, “train-the-trainer,” is “targeted to community organizations to prepare them to be a ranked-choice voting resource.” The trainings are about an hour long, and designed to educate community organizations on ranked-choice voting and how to best communicate ranked-choice voting with the populations that those organizations work with. According to Swatek, the first CFB “train-the-trainer” event on ranked-choice voting was held on January 6 and, as of February 24, the CFB had hosted 25 events with 427 attendees.
Swatek touted the success of partnering with elected officials to host “train-the-trainer” events, citing the first two training sessions, which were held on January 6 and 7 in Queens City Council District 24. The district was the first to use ranked-choice voting for a special election that culminated February 2 in order to fill a vacant Council seat. The events, which brought a total of 150 attendees, were held with the office of Assemblymember Nily Rozic, and with local organizations Chayya, India Home, the South Asian Council for Social Services, and Women for Afghan Women.
Another priority of the train-the-trainer events, aside from the ranked-choice voting special elections (there are several taking place in February and March), has been focusing on a specific audience and partnering with organizations like the Hispanic Federation and Disability Rights New York. The Disability Rights New York session, hosted January 21, had 40 attendees and its YouTube recording has had over 90 watches. Future train-the-trainer events will be held with the Hispanic Federation’s partner organizations and Faith in New York Queens, Manhattan, and Staten Island.
Swatek also mentioned the CFB’s new train-the-trainer events for youth, the first of which launched February 23 with 25 attendees, describing them as “kind of incredible because most of these young people can’t even vote, they just want to learn about it so that they can tell their parents and their siblings that can vote.” The CFB intends to hold one youth train-the trainer event every month.
On voter training Swatek said that the CFB has hosted a total of 43 events with 2,400 attendees. At the trainings, voters are directly given information on what ranked-choice voting is and how to fill out a ranked-choice voting ballot.
A youth focused event with a combined 436 attendees and viewers was held on January 13 on Facebook Livestream, in partnership with the YVote and the Department of Youth and Community Development. On January 19 and 26, the CFB partnered with Queens Borough President Donovan Richards, the city’s Civic Engagement Commission, and DemocracyNYC to host two voter training events, which drew around 300 attendees. Two more voter training sessions were held on Facebook Live on February 10 and 17. The first was co-hosted with Bronx City Council Member Vanessa Gibson (who is running for borough president) and the Stonewall Community Development Corporation and had 406 attendees or followers, while the second was with Queens Assemblymember Alica Hyndman and had 398 attendees or followers. “We’ve found out that using Facebook Live is a really good way of reaching a bunch of voters at once,” Swatek said, “...the cool thing about it is that the video stays on the person’s site.”
On March 9 and 11, the CFB will host voter trainiings with the Office of the Bronx Borough President, and on March 16 and 18 Spanish-language events with them, as well as Dominicanos USA and NALEO.
With panels and events, Swatek cited their ability to get leads for voter training events, saying of such appearances, “They’re a little bit different than trainings because we get to deliver a really short bit of information about ranking-choice voting...once people know we can give trainings...we frequently get emails or interest and invitations to other events.”
In late January, the CFB joined three panels to discuss ranked-choice voting with the civic organization Association for a Better New York (ABNY), news publication City & State, and the Staten Island North Shore Democrats. Future panels and events will be with the Bronx Chapter of Jack and Jill, Fund for the City of New York, APA VOICE, and others.
Swatek mentioned the NYC Elections Consortium RCV Working Group, which is composed of government officials and advocacy and community groups. It has met every two weeks since December, focusing on outreach, communications, and policy ideas for implementing ranked-choice voting. “We’re really proud of the work we’re doing here and think it’s a really important resource,” Swatek said of the working group.
Swatek highlighted the CFB public relations team’s efforts to have information about ranked-choice voting and the CFB training offerings included at various New York City media outlets.
Swatek concluded by speaking about the CFB’s direct outreach efforts through their over 40 volunteers. In anticipation of the Queens special elections in February, the CFB reached using text message around 24,000 voters in District 24 and 3,000 voters in District 31, which just finished its own special election. For the upcoming Bronx special elections, in Council Districts 11 and 15, the CFB has been reaching out via text to around 60,000 voters.
On communications strategies, Mitchell Cohen, content strategy manager at the CFB, outlined the organization’s communications strategy for educating voters on ranked-choice voting. Working with the Center for Civic Design and drawing upon communication styles used in other municipalities such as San Francisco and Minneapolis, the CFB is using what they call the “bite, snack, meal approach.” This strategy provides voters with materials on ranked-choice voting that can either be quickly consumed and digested (bite), moderately in-depth (snack), or fully in-depth (meal). The goal is that voters can choose the style and amount of information that works for them with “multiple points of entry.”
Under the “bite” approach, the CFB mailed out postcards on ranked-choice voting to all 342,978 voters in Queens who could participate in the February ranked-choice special elections, and to those in the Bronx who will be eligible to vote in March. Findings from the Center of Civic Design, which tested “certain materials with New York City voters,” established that successful RCV postcards had a clear “visual example of a correct ballot,” “clear step-by-step instructions,” and “provide context about how to get more information.” According to Cohen, around half of voters who were tested with the Center for Civic Design postcards felt they were comfortable going to vote in a ranked-choice voting election.
The CFB has also been using social media posts and videos. They worked with DemocracyNYC and the Mayor’s Public Engagement Unit to create a social media toolkit, translated into 12 languages. An animated video describing ranked-choice voting will be released on an unspecified date.
The RCV home page and FAQs page can qualify as an RCV “snack” or “meal,” and include information on the reasoning behind ranked-choice voting and how to fill out a ballot. The FAQ page answers various specific questions such as about how writing in candidates works under ranked-choice voting and when results from elections will be delivered. Both are translated into Bengali, Chinese (Traditional), Korean, and Spanish.
Eve Grassfield, a policy advisor at DemocracyNYC, spoke about the city’s work with ranked-choice voting. DemocracyNYC is a citywide initiative created in 2018 by Mayor de Blasio to expand voting access and engagement. Greenfield said that DemocracyNYC has “hit the ground running educating voters on this new system” by hosting workshops, posting on social media, and phone-banking. Workshops are hosted in multiple languages such as Spanish and Urdu, and also amplify other city resources such as COVID-19 vaccinations and testing. Grassfield said that DemocracyNYC has been working “collaboratively” with other city entities such as the CFB, the Civic Engagement Commission, and the Mayor’s Office for Immigrant Affairs to translate educational materials on ranked choice voting into more than twelve different languages.
DemocracyNYC is also working with community-based organizations on a digital mock ballot tool to allow organizations to create practice ranked-choice voting ballots in their language of choice. Available in 14 languages, the tool will allow voters to “test out the ranked-choice voting ballot before heading to the polls by voting on things like their favorite New York City snack or park.”
Grossman, of the NYCLU’s Voting Rights Project, discussed the New York Voting Rights Act (NYVRA), a bill currently under consideration by the state Legislature. The bill, which Grossman called “the bee’s knees,” seeks to produce racial and ethnic voting-access equity across the state. According to Grossman it “favors the voter, favors counting the ballot” as currently there are “too many ways for a voter’s vote to get knocked out.”
The act also provides for enhanced action against voting rights suppression, proves greater legislative guidance to the courts about treating voter suppression cases, and creates a statewide voting database housed in SUNY for public policy analysis. It creates more causes of action against voter intimidation and “attempts to mirror the crown jewel of the Voting Rights Act…the pre-clearance regime,” for counties identified by a formula as “having a particular history of discrimination.”
The next meeting of the Voter Assistance Advisory Committee will be in April.
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by Grace Getman for Gotham Gazette
@GothamGazette