Watching the city waste line
IT’S TIME FOR the city to start socking away some savings, Controller Scott Stringer said Friday — and he’s got an idea of where to start.
Stringer rolled out a new “Agency Watch List” as part of his analysis of Mayor de Blasio’s proposed $88.67 billion budget, identifying city agencies whose spending he said was of most concern.
“It’s time to start taking a hard, data-driven, quantified look at what these agencies are doing, or what they’re not doing,” Stringer said.
He singled out the departments of Homeless Services, Education and Correction.
The city is set to spend $1.9 billion on homeless shelters, and another $700 million to keep people from entering homeless shelters in the first place — but Stringer questioned if the spending was getting results, with the homeless population of 61,029 not in decline.
“We have to ask ourselves if we are really going to solve this crisis, we have to know is this spending leading to the results we need?” he asked. “And right now, we just don’t know. We have to find those answers. Spending money to help homeless people, it’s important. It’s worthy and necessary. But it’s equally important to measure results.”
Stringer argued the same for the Education Department — where he said previous audits have found waste in unaccounted computer hardware and no-bid contracts — and the Correction Department, where he noted the population was down and spending was up.
Stringer’s watchlist went along with a call for the city to increase its savings — saying his office’s projections showed that growth would slow and the city could even see the beginnings of a recession in 2019 or 2020.
With that in mind, he argued the city’s reserves were not a big enough cushion for a future downturn — saying the city ought to add $2.3 billion to get to a better spot. And to do that, he said, the city would need to find more “vigorous” savings at city agencies than the mayor has called for.
Asked about Stringer’s analysis, the mayor’s office didn’t address his concerns about spending.
“The mayor’s made dramatic investments in homeless outreach, our schools and our corrections system. They have helped lead the city to records in job creation, test scores and crime prevention,” spokeswoman Freddi Goldstein said.