In recent years, the City Council and de Blasio Administration have greatly expanded the funding for legal services for low-income New Yorkers facing civil proceedings in court. IBO examines how this funding for civil legal assistance has grown.
Traffic on city streets is approaching pre-pandemic levels. With more traffic, comes more collisions & many of these accidents involve drivers impaired by alcohol or drugs. IBO looks at annual trends in the number of arrests of impaired drivers, as well as the number of collisions involving injuries
FOCUS ON THE PRELIMINARY BUDGET: Over the past year, shifts in the composition of the city’s homeless population, increased spending on rental assistance, and pandemic-related aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency have altered the city’s costs for providing shelter for the homeless.
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.
PRELIMINARY BUDGET FOCUS: A more detailed presentation of our most recent economic forecast for the city reveals a slow path towards recovery, with some sectors of the economy continuing to trail through 2025.
PRELIMINARY BUDGET FOCUS: Even with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority on track to receive $6.5 billion in additional federal aid, there is still potential trouble ahead—for the authority and the city.
Continuing a pattern of cost shifts in recent years, the Governor has proposed a 5 percent cut in state aid for human services programs. See how the reductions would affect aid to the city.
This has been a difficult school year, perhaps most difficult for students living in neighborhoods hardest hit by Covid. At the request of WNYC we have looked at attendance figures for schools, with a focus on schools in these hard-hit neighborhoods.
PRELIMINARY BUDGET FOCUS: The Covid-driven tailspin in the local economy has led to a big drop in expected property tax revenue next year. We explain how the finance department derives the market and assessed values underlying the falloff in projected revenue.
The city’s public housing authority has to deal with removing lead paint, fixing broken elevators, a backlog of thousands of other repairs—and growing budget gaps. See the details on the housing authority’s fiscal challenges.
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.
PRELIMINARY BUDGET FOCUS: A number of changes have been proposed that would affect how the city’s annual contribution to its pension funds are calculated. We explain the changes and their implications for the city’s budget:
There’s been much attention over the past year to how much the city spends on the police department. But policing is only one part, albeit a large one, of a bigger system that includes the courts, detention & related functions. We look at the full cost of the justice system and how much it has grown
DATA TABLES: We have updated the fiscal history section of our website with new data on New Yorkers’ income and personal income tax liability. The new data, the latest available, covers tax years 2017 and 2018.
While most New York City employees cannot receive pensions until they turn 62, police officers and firefighters can retire at any age after they have met their required number of years of service. Since 2010, how many of them began receiving pensions before turning 50?
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?
BUDGET OPTIONS FOR NYC: We present 14 more ways the city can cut costs or raise revenue, with some pro and cons for each of the measures. Our compilation now includes more than 100 budget options.
NYC BY THE NUMBERS: The Old Farmer’s Almanac says the Northeast may be in for a snowy winter. Regardless of such predictions, the city budgets for snow removal based on a formula in the City Charter. Some years this leads to savings, other years shortfalls. What’s the cost of digging out?