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Speaker Adams calls for an end to the annual budget dance
0:53:21
ยท
3 min
Speaker Adams expresses frustration with the annual budget process, which she describes as a 'dance' or 'tango' where the Council must fight to restore critical funding for necessary agency services. She calls for an end to this pattern and asks OMB to commit to baselining funding for critical services.
- The Council often has to restore programs cut or only funded for one fiscal year in the administration's budget
- Speaker Adams argues that time is wasted debating the merits of restoring funding for essential programs
- Director Jiha explains that the lack of long-term funding streams makes it difficult to commit to multi-year funding for programs
- The administration avoids making long-term commitments without identified funding sources to prevent ballooning deficits in future years
Adrienne Adams
0:53:21
In in wrapping this up and taking a look at what happens at the end of this series, at the end of the preliminaries and everything else and and looking at this this annual budget dance.
0:53:33
And I don't think it's a dance.
0:53:35
It's kind of more of a tango or something like that.
0:53:39
But for as long as I can remember, director, every year, the road to adopting a budget in New York City has required the city council to fight to restore critical funding for necessary agency services that the administration has cut or only funded in one fiscal year.
0:53:58
This was doubly so last year when the council restored many of the programs that were pegged in last year's budget.
0:54:06
So much of our time gets wasted.
0:54:09
I know you will agree with me in this so called dance where we spend hours debating the merits of restoring funding for programs that New Yorkers rely upon, libraries, cultural sanitation services, early childhood education, CUNY.
0:54:26
It's time for this council and this administration to finally put an end to this futility and do what's right for New Yorkers.
0:54:35
Director Jeeha, will you commit now to baselining funding for these critical services so that we can turn our attention to advancing budget priorities that aim to enhance the lives of New Yorkers?
0:54:48
And can we stop the dance?
Jacques Jiha
0:54:50
I thought you were gonna come down here and dance.
Brad Lander
0:54:54
I like the dance.
Jacques Jiha
0:54:57
To be quite honest with you, it's not because we want to.
0:55:01
It is to find as you remember last year, had the same challenge with a lot of the programs that are funded by stimulus.
0:55:14
You know, we to find long term funding sources to say, you know what, I'm gonna dedicate x amount of money over time, it's not an easy thing to do to be a quieter industry because we have not done any new taxes, we have not done anything new to generate long term revenues in New York City.
0:55:37
So therefore, we have to look at it on a year over year basis every year, say what your resources are.
0:55:44
It's not because we want to do it dense, to be quite honest with you.
0:55:47
I have no interest whatsoever.
0:55:50
If I could find something, could we could fund it.
0:55:52
Let's just fund it if the resources are there, but long term funding stream has to be there.
0:56:00
If it's not there, if we only have those resources this year, we're moving things from here to there to try to make sure that we find the resources because this program is so critical.
0:56:12
It we cannot make a commitment about long term funding because the long term funding stream is not there.
0:56:18
I cannot say we're gonna fund something because what's gonna happen, we're gonna balloon the deficit in the out years if we were to do that for every single one of these programs because we don't have the funding source in the long term.
0:56:30
So until and unless we have, okay, that funding long term funding stream, it's hard for us to make commitment to say, you know what?
0:56:40
I'm gonna fund x, y, and z over the next five, ten years, but I don't we don't have the funding right now to do it to do these things.
0:56:47
So therefore, we have to take them one year at a time.
0:56:49
It's not because we want to.
0:56:51
It's because the the stream of funding over time is not there.
Adrienne Adams
0:56:55
Okay.
0:56:56
I I thank you for that.
0:56:58
I'm I'm just gonna say that we seem to to be repeating this this pattern every single year.
0:57:03
So my hope, mister chair, is that this is the last dance.
0:57:08
Thank you for your testimony.
Jacques Jiha
0:57:10
Thank you.