Blas bloat boosts city’s headcount
Muni workers up 10% since Bloomberg
The de Blasio administration is continuing to add to its recordbreaking number of city employees, budget records show.
The headcount is projected to soar to 327,405 by the end of the fiscal year, June 30, 2017 — up 4.5 percent from 313,0192 workers employed at the end of the last fiscal year, according to city Office of Management and Budget records analyzed by the Citizens Budget Commission.
The number of municipal workers was down to 293,550 in fiscal year 2012, when the city was gripped in a recession during the Bloomberg administration.
The city has been on a hiring spree since de Blasio settled into City Hall, with the headcount rising 10 percent from fiscal year 2014, when there were 297,349 workers.
Budget officials revised their hiring estimates upward last month, projecting nearly 4,000 more jobs from the 323,300 jobs they expected the city to retain next year. Three-quarters of those are teaching positions.
Some fiscal experts are questioning why the city is adding jobs when the city’s economy is slowing — growing only 1.7 percent from April to June this year, according to city-comptroller report.
“It’s concerning considering the cost of compensation for each employee,” said Citizens Budget Commission analyst Maria Doulis. “Agencies should be self-funding some of these new priorities by more aggressively finding savings from improving efficiency.”
City Hall spokeswoman Freddi Goldstein countered that the city was adding more workers “responsibly and as is deemed necessary to move forward agendas that keep this city safe and progressive, such as providing Pre-K For All, expanding the NYPD, pushing forward Vision Zero.”
The Department of Education will add 3,558 teaching jobs in fiscal year 2017, to 120,135.
The new positions are spread throughout 752 primary schools, high schools and pre-K programs and covered by $161 million in statefunded grants added to the fiscal year 2017 budget, city officials said. The number of city Correction Department civilian workers will skyrocket 34 percent, from 1,676 to 2,238, in the next fiscal year, records show. Many of the new staff will help freed inmates find jobs and provide programming for inmates while they’re incarcerated. The city Department of Information and Technology will see a 31 percent surge in staff, from 1,379 to 1,803, records show. The agency is absorbing some outsoutside technologyogy contcontractors and adding st staff to techsupport support te teams and the 311 and 91911 systems, a City HaHall spokeswoman said. And the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene will get 20 percentcent more workers,wo from 5,858 to 7,059, rrecords say. Much of that increincrease is for the department’s nurse homevisiting program that will allow staffsta to serve 795 mmore clients, and school hhealth services.