AGENCY TESTIMONY
Budget implications and retention issues of city vacancies
0:20:46
·
63 sec
The testimony addresses the significant budget implications of the city's vacancies and challenges the narrative around recruitment and retention. Garrido argues that the vacancy crisis is more complex than simply a matter of inadequate pay or inability to recruit.
- The Independent Budget Office estimates that 22,000 vacancies are saving the city $1.5 billion, a figure that is growing.
- Efforts have been made to enhance payment and implement remote work options in some departments.
- The testimony argues that the city faces a retention problem rather than a recruitment problem, exacerbated by bureaucratic obstacles.
Henry Garrido
0:20:46
As you know, I serve on the advisory council, the independent budget office.
0:20:50
The independent budget of estimated that 22,000 vacancies is saving the city $1,500,000,000, and it's growing.
0:21:00
And so this game and ship about well, we can't recruit because we can't, pay people enough.
0:21:08
It's no longer the case.
0:21:09
We did remote work.
0:21:10
We did a equity panel to enhance payment in HRA and all the titles that are there.
0:21:16
We paid out of collective bargaining.
0:21:18
The city didn't have to come up with that money.
0:21:20
So we don't have a recruitment problem.
0:21:22
We have a retention problem, and we have an OMB problem.
0:21:26
OMB is running the city of New York, and he needs to stop because a budget is negotiated between the mayor and the council as part of our charter.
0:21:35
That needs to be respected because it doesn't make any sense to have a budget that allocates funding for the agencies in the budget process not to exercise the labor and be stopping the very same thing this council worked very hard to restore.
