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Dear New Yorkers,
Every year, we spend a lot of time – and quite rightly – debating the City budget. The budget reflects our priorities, shapes the lives of over 8 million New Yorkers, and has a significant impact on our local economy.
That’s why the Charter requires that the Mayor propose the preliminary budget in January. Why the City Council holds dozens of public budget hearings. Why oversight agencies like the Comptroller’s office provide extensive analysis. Why advocacy groups conduct hundreds of lobbying visits and rallies. And why extensive negotiations take place before the Council and Mayor reach an agreement in June.
We wind up paying much less attention, however, to what actually happens – how the City’s actual revenues and expenditures compare to what we projected in the budget. Part of the problem is timing: the fiscal year (which runs from July 1 to June 30th) is only half complete when the Mayor proposes the following year’s preliminary budget, and still not over when that budget is adopted.
The City’s audit, called the Annual Comprehensive Financial Report (the “ACFR”), isn’t released until four months later, by October 30th. That’s lightning-fast as government audits go (props to the great team in our Bureau of Accountancy, our partners at the City’s Office of Management & Budget, the Financial Administration Services Agency, City agencies, and our auditors at Grant Thorton); but it’s still well into the next fiscal year.
Still, it’s important to dive in; so that’s what we’re doing with this month’s Economic Spotlight. On October 26, 2023, the Comptroller’s Office released the Annual Consolidated Financial Report for Fiscal Year 2023 (winning an award for excellence in government fiscal transparency for the 54th year in a row). In the Spotlight, we dig in on how the City’s actual revenues and expenditures compared to the projections adopted way back in June 2022. And we take a look at how this compares to prior years to add context and identify trends.
The toplines: Actual revenues in FY 2023 exceeded the adopted budget by $7.85 billion, or 7.8%; that’s a smaller variance than FY 2022, but greater than in the years before the pandemic. That’s generally good news, and reflects an economy and a city that are doing better than most economists expected. The City used these funds to pay for unanticipated costs, including $1.474 billion on services to asylum seekers; to cover costs that should have been reasonably anticipated but were underbudgeted; and to contribute to the prepayment of over $5 billion of FY 2024 expenses. The analysis of the ACFR confirms what we routinely highlight in our budget reports: the City chronically underbudgets in a number of areas – including uniformed overtime, special education Carter Cases, public assistance costs, and other costs. And I believe the analysis also affirms the need for a formula-based approach to making deposits into our Rainy Day Fund, rather than leaving it to the vagaries of the annual budget process.
Check out the Economic Spotlight for more details. Comparing the budget to actuals, over time, provides a clearer picture of what we actually raise and spend, and allows for a more honest and informed debate about critical decisions for the future.
Meanwhile, both the U.S. and the New York City economy continue to grow – private employment in New York City has now fully recovered, surpassing its pre-pandemic level by 19,000, and tourism continues to recover – even as consumer and business confidence have declined in recent months. We are living in unusual times, and not everything can be predicted by recent trends, or by comparing budget to actuals.
Still, it helps to have someone watching the numbers.
Brad Lander
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