“Today Citizen’s Union has issued a report on discretionary funding in New York City, which contains recommendations for improving the discretionary budget process. I want to thank Dick Dadey and Citizens Union for this thoughtful analysis, and look forward to working with them on their recommendations.

I’m proud to announce that the Council has already incorporated several of these recommendations into our budget process. Additionally, the Council supports and will work to implement additional recommendations.

First, the Council will implement the recommendations to formalize the Council’s reforms and adopt them as part of the Council Rules. The Council will also expand the online searchable database to include capital funding.

Second, the Council supports recommendations to expand innovative budget practices, and await the results of the participatory budget exercise being conducted by several Council Members.
Third, the Council supports making the more detailed scope of services developed during the contracting process publicly available and is already working with the Mayor’s Office of Contract Services to do so. This is an issue I have been particularly vocal about as it relates to the City’s budget negotiating process.

Fourth, we agree with the goal to post Schedule C earlier in advance of the Council’s vote to the extent practicable. Schedule C has been available at least 24 hours in advance since 2008 and we will continue to strive to give members and the public greater access to all budget documents.
Finally, the Citizens Union report recommends that member local, youth, and aging expense funding be allocated half equally to each member and half through a needs-based approach.

We agree with the first part of this recommendation, and in fact, all members currently receive a base amount of discretionary funding that equals more than half of all local, youth and aging funding. We disagree, however, with the proposal for formula-based expense and capital distributions. Discretionary funding exists in part as a way to fill in gaps in the City’s overall budget, and prevent communities and organizations from falling through the cracks. The recent example of the City’s Out-of-School Time awards and the EarlyLearn proposal to target childcare by zip code amply demonstrate the need for flexibility to allocate funds to address unmet needs. With respect to capital funding, our City’s hospitals, libraries, senior and daycare centers, parks, cultural institutions and other physical structures are not distributed throughout the 51 districts in such a way as to make such a formula viable for capital funding. Moreover, the one-time nature of most capital projects also means that funding will vary from year-to-year in a way that is not amenable to fixed formulaic distribution.

The Report also recommends that Council Initiatives be distributed through a needs-based formula. All initiative funds are already objectively distributed towards high need areas or targeted to specific populations.

I appreciate Citizen’s Union’s recognition that discretionary funding is an important part of our city’s budget process, and provides a financial lifeline to thousands of non-profit groups performing critical services in our communities.

I also want to thank them for highlighting the City Council’s historic reforms to discretionary funding, many of which were developed in collaboration with Citizen’s Union. Budget reform has been a priority since I first took office as Speaker, and these reforms have brought an unprecedented level of transparency, accountability and integrity to the system. I look forward to continuing to work with Citizen’s Union to make the process even stronger.”

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