Much has been discussed about growth in city spending for Carter Cases—when students with disabilities are enrolled in private schools & parents seek tuition payment. In FY22, it topped $900M. We examine Carter Case spending & what the costs include.
PRELIMINARY BUDGET FOCUS: City spending on tuition and other supports for special needs students under the rubric of Carter Cases continues to rise rapidly.
This report, the first produced under a 2017 City Council law that turns to IBO to issue periodic reports on New York City economic development tax expenditures, looks at the efficiency and effectiveness of two programs: Commercial Revitalization & Commercial Expansion.
FOCUS ON THE EXECUTIVE BUDGET: Before the Mayor’s recent announcement that that the city may need to lay off or furlough as many as 22,000 municipal workers, the Executive Budget included the elimination of some vacant positions and a partial hiring freeze.
A chart showing the change in the population of those using homeless shelters and the funding of shelters from fiscal year 2008 to a projection of fiscal year 2018.
]Roughly 150,000 special education students in New York City schools receive speech therapy and other “related services.” Many students are supposed to receive one or more services multiple times a week. With hybrid schedules, how many can receive their services in person?
FOCUS ON THE PRELIMINARY BUDGET: City support for charter schools is likely to be substantially higher than the amount the de Blasio Administration has budgeted. The increase is driven by two factors: higher charter school enrollment than currently projected in the budget and likely changes to the state formula that sets the amount the city must provide for each charter school student.
Cases of sexually transmitted diseases—chlamydia, gonorrhea, and (primary and secondary) syphilis—have reached their highest reported levels in 30 years in NYC and record levels nationwide.
This IBO report examines the distribution of ICIP benefits and describes the programmatic changes between ICIP and the new Industrial and Commercial Abatement Program.
This New York City Independent Budget Office fiscal brief gives a background and data on the AIDS epidemic in New York City. Included in this brief are caseloads and finances related to treating AIDS, reflections on efforts being taken to combat the epidemic at the time, and projections for the future.
Two new federal policies tying Medicare reimbursements to quality of care took effect in October 2012. Hospitals are now penalized for excess readmissions. An additional penalty or bonus can be awarded, based on adherence to clinical standards and ratings on patient surveys.
EXECUTIVE BUDGET FOCUS: After years of struggle, NYC Health + Hospitals’ fiscal condition has improved. Part of the elixir has been increased city support. But will this support be able to continue?
For years, some providers of city-funded social services have questioned disparities in the funding of their programs, with wide differences in how much support some groups receive for each participant despite offering a similar set of services.
NYC BY THE NUMBERS: Following an investigation into health care in the city’s jails, in 2015 Mayor de Blasio shifted responsibility for providing health care in the jails from private firms to the city’s public hospital system. Despite a shrinking jail population, the cost of care has increased.
The Economic Development Corporation is required to issue annual reports on the discretionary economic incentive deals it makes with businesses and nonprofit organizations that affect New York City.
IBO has examined the shares of reports to the hotline over several years that came from mandated reporters versus those that came from the general public, such as relatives, neighbors, or anonymous callers.
The city is in the process of spending $8.7b to close Rikers Island & replace it and other jails with new borough-based facilities. But the new jails are not expected be ready until 2026. In the interim, the city needs to spend millions of dollars on major repairs of the jails destined for closure.
PRELIMINARY BUDGET FOCUS: A new brief focusing on our latest estimates for tax revenues based on our recent economic forecast and the Mayor’s Preliminary Budget and financial plan through 2025.
Graffiti-Free NYC is a city program that removes graffiti at no cost to the owners of residential, commercial, or industrial buildings. Anyone can report graffiti on any property by calling 311.
With a growing number of English language learners and an expanding set of programs to assist them, IBO looked at shifts in placements at 1,512 traditional public schools over the four years from 2014-2015 through 2017-2018.
The city’s diminishing stock of rent-stabilized apartments is highly sought after by prospective tenants because these regulated units often rent at below-market rates and offer a variety of tenant protections including the right to lease renewal.
NYC BY THE NUMBERS: The Covid-19 pandemic brought renewed attention to the importance of parks and open space in neighborhoods. But some NYC neighborhoods have substantially more park space than others. We map the differences by square foot per resident.
As of June, the Department of Education had 131,199 full-time employees. More than 119,000 served in jobs under the broad classification of pedagogues, which includes roles such as principals, assistant principals, teachers, and teaching assistants also known as paraprofessionals.
NYC BY THE NUMBERS: Small businesses are an essential part of the New York City economy. Which industries have the most small businesses—and how much do they pay on average?
Many of the city’s highest-scoring students will likely attend one of the city’s nine specialized high schools. But many high-scorers—including some offered admission to a specialized high school—will attend other schools.
Last year NYC's five pension systems for municipal employees paid $12.9 billion in benefits to more than 332,000 retirees or their beneficiaries. While many retired city workers remain in the five boroughs, many others collect their pension checks in states and counties all around the country.
Before the recent announcement of ThriveNYC, the de Blasio Administration’s initiatives to improve access to mental health programs for youth, adults, and seniors, the Mayor had previously launched measures to boost behavioral health programs for the city’s inmate population.
The Independent Budget Office examined Cultural Development Fund (CDF) awards made by the Department of Cultural Affairs for fiscal years 2019 through 2023 and identified award amounts by fiscal year and borough.
Nearly 400 public schools with grades 9-12 offer advancement placement courses. Course content is very similar across the schools, but some schools weight student grades, potentially turning a B into an A. With appendix table.
The number of students in grades 6 through 12 suspended for breaking school rules has continued to decline in recent years as the City Council and the de Blasio Administration have fostered policies that promote alternatives to keeping students out of the classroom.
Twenty-one percent of the households that moved out of New York City in 2012 moved within New York State—either to the city’s suburbs or further upstate.
New York City’s budget includes more than $450m this year to fund the offices of the city’s 5 District Attorneys and Special Narcotics Prosecutor. In the 1980s & 1990s, as the number of arrests climbed staffing at these offices grew. But as arrests fell sharply over the past decade, did staff fall?
IBO reviewed 131 NYC Housing Connect listings for 3,605 new affordable apartments over a recent six-month period, surveying the distribution of rents by income group and by apartment size, as well as rent-to-income ratios.
The Adams Administration increased funding for the city’s Summer Youth Employment Program in the Preliminary Budget. IBO explores what we know about the planned expansion thus far and what questions remain.
New York State real property tax law establishes the 421-a property tax exemption for the construction of new multifamily housing in the city. This map shows where & what types of buildings receive these breaks.
The New York City Department for the Aging spent about $110 million in fiscal year 2017 to support programs at nearly 250 senior centers throughout the city.
Over the last decade, the number of city residents receiving food stamps has more than doubled, while
public assistance recipients have decreased and the number of blind and disabled New Yorkers receiving
Supplemental Security Income benefits has remained flat.
NYC BY THE NUMBERS: The pandemic led to staggering job losses in the city. How much were efforts to find jobs for the city’s public-assistance recipients affected?
As part of our recently released Education Indicators, IBO examined what impact living in a low-income neighborhood may have on student achievement, as well as how attending a school with a higher concentration of students from low-income neighborhoods affects individual achievement.
Includes IBO Expenditure Projections, IBO Revenue Projections, Pricing Differences Between IBO and the Bloomberg Administration, and IBO versus Mayor's Office
of Management and Budget Economic Forecasts
Includes IBO Expenditure Projections, IBO Revenue Projections, Pricing Differences Between IBO and the Bloomberg Administration, and IBO versus Mayor's Office of Management and Budget
Economic Forecasts.
REPORT: Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams asked how many hours do subway riders lose to delays during the morning rush and what does it cost in monetary terms. We provide our estimates
FOCUS ON THE PRELIMINARY BUDGET: As the city opens new marine transfer stations for processing and shipping trash to landfills, the cost for long-term export contracts is rising.
This document provides an update to IBO’s February 2001 Background Paper entitled “Overview of the Waste Stream Managed by the NYC Department of Sanitation.” Here, we present a condensed survey of the same data for fiscal years 2000-2004.
Using student-level data, IBO tracked how many students enrolled in the 2019-2020 school year, when Covid-19 first hit, returned in the following (2020-2021) school year.
In this brief, IBO estimates the total cost of the city’s labor contracts under two scenarios that explore differences in contract terms and the timing of their ratification, as well as the impact of changes in the size of the city’s labor force.
The New York City Independent Budget Office just released its City Fighting Homelessness & Eviction Prevention
Supplement (CityFHEPS) explainer! Learn more about the program's history, its challenges, and funding by reading our explainer today.
This updated guide to the New York City Capital Budget by the Independent Budget Office addresses the intricacies and the operations that go behind managing the budget. The document defines the capital budget, its components, and the various resources that contribute to it.
This guide will help any interested New Yorker understand and participate in the city's budget process. It outlines the components of the city's budget, the timelines and processes for adopting it, and provides an overview of how the city raises revenues and how those revenues get spent. Guidance on where to find budget documents and a contact list of key players in the budget process will help readers figure out where to find answers to budget questions.
This guide is to help get New Yorkers to understand and participate in the city's budget process by outlining the components of the city's budget, the timelines and processes for adopting it, and providing an overview of how the city raises revenues and how those revenues are spent.
While there’s been much attention to the de Blasio Administration’s expansion of pre-k and 3-k, after-school programs for elementary and middle school students also have substantially increased. We track the rise in enrollment and spending since 2014.
The deaths of two young children in 2016 sent shock waves through the city's child welfare system. The number of reports of suspected child abuse or maltreatment escalated in the following months. Did this result in more substantiated cases of abuse? More children placed under court supervision or in foster care? IBO explores these and related questions
With the parents of thousands of preschoolers needing to go to work and many K-8th grade students doing schoolwork remotely, the de Blasio Administration created the Learning Bridges and Learning Labs programs to provide care, supervision, and help with classes at hundreds of sites across the city.
The details behind our latest economic forecast, estimate of tax revenues, and projection of spending based on the Mayor’s Executive Budget and Financial Plan through 2024.
Subway and bus ridership fell with onset of Covid-19, playing havoc with the MTA’s budget. Many of the same factors keeping riders off the MTA’s rails, buses, bridges & tunnels is also leading to a slump in the agency’s dedicated tax revenues, another primary source of its funding.
This report lists the statistics of the High School Class of 2009, regarding the state mandated regents tests and the number of students who were deemed college ready based on them. This report uses each student's Regents exam results to track their progress towards graduation.
FOCUS ON THE EXECUTIVE BUDGET: We presents our analysis of the de Blasio Administration's Executive Budget for 2019 and financial plan through 2022, including IBO's projections of budget gaps and surpluses. The report provides our latest economic forecast along with our estimates for tax revenue collections and spending based on the Mayor's plan.
How much have the three pension funds invested in oil, gas, and other fossil fuel companies? How many shares do they own and what is the value of these holdings? IBO has compiled the numbers.
IBO has looked at assessment appeals brought to the Tax Commission over the years 2013-2017 and summarized the results by number of appeals, property tax reductions, property types, and the borough where the properties are located.
Although required under a 1991 law, the city does not publish data by precinct that tells New Yorkers how long it takes the police department to respond to a 911 call—from the initial call to the time officers arrive at the scene.
NYC BY THE NUMBERS: With City Hall preparing for layoffs due to the pandemic-related recession, IBO looked at the rise and fall in city staff before, during, and after the Great Recession. Which agencies had the deepest cuts? Which grew the most in recent years?
The New York City Independent Budget Office's report analyzing the Specialized High Schools Admissions process and whether admissions results are different by disability status.
In October 2014, the city’s Human Resources Administration announced a new employment plan for public assistance recipients. The plan, which was already being phased in before the formal announcement, makes the agency’s employment programs less punitive and puts more emphasis on education & training
This report, published by the Independent Budget Office, details the fiscal impact of the proposed Atlantic Yards arena in Brooklyn. It was found that over a 30-year period, the arena will cost the city more than it will generate in tax revenues. However, the arena will fiscally benefit the state, as well as create many new jobs.
An Independent Budget Office (IBO) analysis evaluates the employment effects of the $30.3 billion in Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans distributed to New York City employers in 2020 and 2021.
The Mayor struck deals with the city's two largest labor unions in June that provide paid parental leave to more than 200,000 municipal workers. The two deals have a number of major differences. IBO takes a closer look, examining the assumptions and estimating the costs to the city.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced the largest city investment in housing construction in 2002. In 2005, he raised the amount of spending from $3 billion to $7.5 billion. Public Advocate Bill de Blasio looks at how the plan has evolved as fiscal conditions change.
The New Housing Marketplace Plan is Mayor Bloomberg's 10-year plan to create or preserve 165,000 units of affordable housing. The original five-year plan, announced in 2003, called for 65,000
units by 2008, but was expanded in February 2006 to a 10-year plan, ending in 2013, with a goal of 165,000 units.
This report is a mixed-method study which investigated the extent to which elementary students with disabilities were being recommended for more inclusive settings with their peers without disabilities in the New York City public school system.
REPORT: The Governor contends that localities have allowed Medicaid spending to spiral because the state enacted a cap in 2012 that spared them from having to share in the increasing costs. His Executive Budget proposes to counter this.
LETTER: How much would it cost to have a social worker in every New York City public school? Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer asked—and we answered.
Under the recently adopted fiscal year 2015-2019 capital plan for schools, 62 percent of the 32,560 new seats will be completed within the five-year plan period, including projects that had been funded for design but not construction under the previous plan.
Just days after the events of September 11, 2001, President Bush and Congress promised that $20 billion in federal aid would be provided to help New York City
recover from the attack. Given the unprecedented scale of the destruction-physical, economic, and emotional-no one had real estimates of what the needs
and costs would be. As a result, the federal promise was loosely defined. Assistance was provided for immediate relief but a large portion of the aid was to flow to New York
over time as specific uses of the assistance were determined.
Testimony of Julia Konrad, Assistant Director for Education, New York City Independent Budget Office to the Rockefeller Institute of Government on the State Foundation Aid Formula
IBO’s Jonathan Rosenberg presents testimony to the City Council on the difficulty in tracking the reasons for delays and cost overruns on parks department capital projects—a problem that extends to projects at other agencies as well.