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Q&A
Commissioner Nieves and Andrew Rein discuss enhancing budget transparency and accuracy
1:44:34
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106 sec
Commissioner Dr. Lisette Nieves asks CBC President Andrew Rein for further budget transparency recommendations. Rein emphasizes his proposal to mandate explanations for significant changes or discrepancies in budget estimates, arguing this would enforce the charter's existing requirement for "reasonable and appropriate" estimates, which he believes is currently violated by severe underbudgeting for known expenses like housing vouchers. He calls the current situation unprecedented.
- Rein's key transparency proposal focuses on mandating explanations for budget estimate variations.
- He argues this enforces existing charter language and combats current inaccurate budgeting practices.
Dr. Lisette Nieves
1:44:34
Hi.
1:44:34
My question is for Mr.
1:44:36
Ryan.
1:44:36
You're thinking about Budget Commission.
1:44:38
You sat here earlier through some testimony, particularly about what are some of the transparent further transparency recommendations in the budgeting process.
1:44:46
I was curious if you had any that you wanna add to that.
1:44:50
The closest you came to that was talking a bit more about the deposit withdrawal guidelines on the rainy day fund.
1:44:55
But if there were any others, I'd love to hear that.
Frederick Shack
1:44:58
And if I could just
Andrew Rein
1:45:00
first reiterate, that is part of what we're talking about in terms of the integrity of the executives' budget estimates.
1:45:09
And as I said, right now, I don't believe that the budget actually conforms to the charter because I don't think there are accurate and reasonable estimates that are in the budget as as we speak, which is unfortunate.
1:45:22
Of course, we have a four face jails, there's no charter kind of violation channel, you know, in the capital program.
1:45:29
So the answer is to then provide that assumption.
1:45:33
So if the budget from year to year is going up or down on revenue or expense by more than 10, that should be explained.
1:45:39
And and, again, I'll just reiterate the example on city housing.
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No one here, including myself, believes that the city's planning to kick half the people off their vouchers on July 1 or all or all all of them off on on January 1 next year.
1:45:53
We all believe that those vouchers are gonna be honored for the year, but the budget doesn't have the money.
1:45:57
It's that kind of transparency to be if if spending is going up or down more than 10% or if spending estimates revenue estimates vary from the city or state controller by more than 20%, there should be an explanation there.
1:46:10
That kind of sunshine would help bring integrity to the budget process that it doesn't have now.
1:46:15
And I will just mention, I've been watching this about off and on for thirty years.
1:46:18
It's never been like this.