Mayor Adams’ $111.6 billion spending plan for the coming fiscal year could’ve been a lot more reckless — but a lot more cautious, too.
Good news: Though the bottom line is up $4 billion over this year’s adopted budget, after adjusting for prepayments and added spending, it’s actually down a hair.
City-funded outlays will climb by about $5 billion, or 6.3%, offsetting the loss of expiring COVID-related federal funds.
Bad news: The current budget includes about $7.5 billion in outlays tacked on after its adoption — and no doubt Adams’ new one will similarly see major upcharges later on.
For starters, the City Council’s spendaholics will surely demand more spending before the budget takes effect.
Plus, as Citizens Budget Commission President Andrew Rein notes, Adams has already “low-balled expenditures” by about $2 billion, based on the current level of city services.
Still more funding may be needed to meet the state’s absurd, counterproductive class-size mandates and an expansion of housing vouchers.
And: Even before the new costs get tacked on, Adams’ planning leaves a monster cash shortfall, $16.7 billion, for the three years after that.
He pooh-poohs that problem, claiming the gaps are “within historic norms” — meaning expenses might come in lower or revenue higher than the budget projects.
Yet even if so, there’d still be no money to plug holes left by the costs not yet accounted for.
Adams’ proposal “significantly underbudgets for planned services, leaving New Yorkers without a clear view of the city’s fiscal picture or how it will maintain, expand or shrink critical programs, given looming gaps,” warns Rein.
“While the budget may be fiscally stable for the coming year,” adds Rein, “even the clouded estimates cannot hide the danger ahead if spending growth isn’t restrained.”
Adams & Co. deserve praise for resisting the temptation to tap into reserve funds, now at $8.2 billion, and for upping the number of cops — with 2,400 to be added “within the coming year,” says Hizzoner.
And clearly the mayor is working to restore fiscal sanity after years of drunken-sailor spend-fests under Mayor de Blasio — all while facing billions in unforeseen migrant costs.
Yet Adams still has a tough fiscal nut to crack, with scary gaps that even an expanding economy and tax revenue aren’t likely to close.
All of which needlessly leaves New Yorkers in a regrettable state of fiscal suspense.
