The City Council is seeking to join the lawsuit filed by low-income tenants against Mayor Eric Adams’ administration last week over City Hall’s refusal to implement a set of housing voucher laws, setting up a courtroom clash between the two branches of government.

A coalition of good government groups calls on New York lawmakers to reject Gov. Kathy Hochul's budget proposals that would expand her control of state spending. In a letter to Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins and House Speaker Carl Heastie, the coalition urged legislative budget writers to reject several provisions in the budget they said would give the governor's office "broad, unilateral spending and borrowing authorities that are unnecessary and fiscally risky."

Budgeting is not simple – especially when you’re dealing with a 12-digit budget that is bigger than that of some entire states. New York City Mayor Eric Adams released his budget proposal in his annual address in January, and since then, some of the city’s budget watchdogs have released their analyses.

“The administration was right to implement the previous two rounds of [cuts] and reduce costs for asylum seeker and migrant services,” he said. “But more spending restraint and program prioritization is still needed to stabilize the city’s finances,” Andrew Rein

“The bottom line is that aid increases should go to where there is rising need," said Patrick Orecki,"… Current formulas and aids don't do that well enough.”

Long active in charitable and philanthropic works, O’Byrne also serves on the boards of the American Irish Historical Association, Citizens Union, the Steering Committee of ABNY, and as a Trustee of the Citizens Budget Commission.

Under Andrew Rein’s leadership, the CBC spearheaded the successful effort to create a New York City Rainy Day Fund, developed blueprints to manage city and state budgets during the pandemic, identified efficiencies to balance the Metropolitan Transportation Authority budget and recommended policies to increase housing production.

Now, with more people continuing to work from home since the Covid-19 pandemic, elected leaders in Connecticut and New Jersey say that tax money belongs to them, not New York—and they’re willing to fight for it.

As a mental health social worker, she’s been quickly able to find work in Florida, where the lack of state income tax was another big draw compared to New York — which had the highest taxes in the nation in 2021, according to the Citizens Budget Commission.

"Between school aid and Medicaid alone, you have well over half of the total state spending plan," Patrick Orecki, Director of State Studies at the Citizens Budget Commission, says. "They are by far the two biggest pieces. So, if you're looking for savings, you're going to start in the places where marginal changes are going to yield the biggest dollar amounts."

“The fiscal year 2028 gap widens to $9.9 billion, called ‘sizable’ by the governor. Yet, the state’s spending base is supported in part by at least $5.5 billion in temporary tax increases and pre-payments from prior year surpluses. Together, these reveal that the state’s structural gap is approximately $15 billion,” Andrew Rein

“We remain very concerned that planned spending is significantly short of what is needed to continue current services and urge the administration to be as transparent as possible by including the full costs of all programs in the budget and identifying which would have to shrink or stop due to lack of revenue to support them,” Ana Champeny.