Reports

The recession greatly weakened the finances of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), and for nearly two years the MTA has been attempting to stabilize its finances by reducing waste, cutting services, and raising fares and tolls.

The Comprehensive Annual Financial Report for the State of New York for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2011.

Along with technological advances comes the responsibility to protect confidential information adequately so that it cannot be accessed by unauthorized individuals. Failure to do so can come at a considerable financial cost.

On June 29, 2011, New York City adopted a $65.9 billion budget ($46.5 billion in City funds) for FY 2012, which began on July 1, 2011. While the budget is balanced, it relies on $5.1 billion in nonrecurring resources, including the FY 2011 surplus and a drawdown from the Retiree Health Benefits Trust. These resources will have to be replaced in subsequent years, and even though the City’s economy is slowly improving, the June 2011 financial plan (the “June Plan”) projects budget gaps that average $4.8 billion during fiscal years 2013 through 2015.

Coney Island and Brighton Beach are located on a peninsula in southern Brooklyn, along the Atlantic Ocean. The oceanfront location, along with access to mass transit, helped shape the development of these neighborhoods, which became a summer resort and home to the country’s oldest amusement area.

New York’s 57 counties (excluding New York City), 61 cities, 932 towns, and 556 villages reported spending nearly $2.6 billion to maintain 187,000 highway lane miles in 2009. Highway maintenance is one of the largest categories of expense for local governments, representing 7.6 percent of total local government expenditures.

Industrial Development Agencies (IDAs) are public benefit corporations created by an act of the State Legislature on behalf of one or more local governments. IDAs are intended to advance the job opportunities, health, general prosperity and economic welfare of the people of the State of New York, and to improve their recreation opportunities, prosperity and standard of living.

New York City’s May 2011 financial plan (the “May Plan”) projects a surplus of $3.2 billion for FY 2011, resulting largely from a drawdown in reserves, higher revenues due to an improving economy, and agency cost-reduction actions. The City intends to transfer the surplus to FY 2012 to help balance that year’s budget.

New York City has a serious lack of affordable housing. The New York State Comptroller issued a report on affordable housing in April 2009 that utilized data from the 2008 New York City Housing and Vacancy Survey (HVS), which is issued every three years.

In 2010-11, vendors were paid interest totaling $1,398,859, representing an increase of $486,799, or more than 53 percent, above the prior year. 

For many years, budgets in New York State, in addition to being enacted after the start of the fiscal year, have been characterized by overly optimistic revenue estimates, unrealistic spending targets, and excessive reliance on temporary or non-recurring revenues.

Real property tax assessment is an important function of local governments. In 2009, New York’s city, county, town and village assessing units spent nearly $132 million and employed roughly 1,350 certified assessors, tax directors and assessment appraisers.

The economic recovery took hold in New York in 2010, but it has been slow, and not all regions of the State have benefited equally.

New York’s counties, cities, towns, and villages frequently utilize local development corporations (LDCs) and other private entities for economic development and other activities. These LDCs and similar private entities are exempt from many of the constitutional and statutory provisions that guide the operations and financial transactions conducted by local governments, increasing the risk of waste, fraud, or abuse of taxpayer dollars or assets. 

The federal government has been operating under Continuing Resolutions since the start of the new federal fiscal year that began October 1, 2010. Despite ongoing efforts between the President and Congress to reach agreement on a federal budget, taxpayers face the threat of the first federal government shutdown since 1996.

The number of Hispanic-owned businesses in New York State totaled 193,200 in 2007, the latest year for which data are available. This represented an increase of 85.4 percent compared with the 1997 level, or nearly three times the rate of growth in the total number of businesses in the State. 

Spanish

New York City’s economy is recovering from the recession at a faster pace than the nation and the rest of New York State. Since job losses ended in November 2009, the City has gained 73,400 private sector jobs, or half of the jobs lost in the recession, but public sector job losses are beginning to accelerate. While the unemployment rate has declined from a peak of 10 percent to 8.9 percent, it remains unacceptably high.

Since the housing bubble burst in 2007, many homeowners across the nation have faced foreclosure.

The 2011-12 Executive Budget proposes a $1.5 billion net cut in State aid to schools, which would result in a 7.3 percent decrease in aid to districts statewide, translating to a 2.9 percent reduction to total general fund budgets.

District by District report - pdf

The budget process for State Fiscal Year (SFY) 2011-12 is well underway, with several milestones reached. On March 1, the Executive and the Legislature reached consensus on an economic and revenue forecast for the current year and the next, and on March 3, the Executive submitted final amendments to the proposed budget.