The New York City Council's hearings on Mayor Bill de Blasio's $82.2 billion executive budget are moving forward in a quick and timely fashion, Budget Director Dean Fuleihan told a meeting of the Municipal Analysts Group of New York on Friday.
"The budget hearings will be done in a few weeks and I'm confident we'll have a timely and cooperative adoption process with the council, as we have since Mayor Bill de Blasio took office," Fuleihan said.
The council is working to approve a final budget before the city's fiscal year begins on July 1
Fuleihan, who gave the analysts group an overview of the mayor's executive budget, said that the city's fiscal health and economy remained on a sound financial footing.
Through three year of budgets "this administration has shown a sustained commitment to responsible stewardship of the city's finances," Fuleihan told MAGNY. "You can see evidence of sound fiscal management in our unprecedented reserves, our manageable out-year gaps … in our citywide savings programs – and in the fact that 95% of our workforce is now under contract."
In his executive budget presented on April 26, De Blasio boosted the city's reserve funds, adding $250 million to the Retiree Health Benefits Trust for Fiscal 2017. In total, the budget includes $1 billion each year in the general reserve; $3.7 billion in the Retiree Health Benefit Trust; and $500 million in the new Capital Stabilization Reserve. The plan was an increase from the $82.1 billion preliminary budget proposed by the mayor in January.
For the past five years, the city's population has grown at the fastest rate since the 1920s and now has net positive migration across all five boroughs. With this rise, employment has hit an all-time high of nearly 4.3 million jobs. This includes 249,000 jobs added in the past two years alone, a record for any two-year period in the city's history, Fuleihan said.
"Our economy continues to diversify," he said, "showing growth across multiple significant industries."
The administration has also settled union contracts with 95% of its employees; the agreements include $3.4 billion in healthcare savings through Fiscal 2019 and $1.3 billion in every year after that.
In the healthcare sector, the mayor has proposed additional funding to help the city's fiscally challenged public hospital system. The city will support Health and Hospitals by adding $160 million in Fiscal 2016, which grows to $180 million each year afterward. This will bring the city's total commitment to H+H to almost $2 billion a year by Fiscal 2020. Under the budget, the city would also make a $100 million capital investment in new infrastructure.
H+H serves over 1.2 million New Yorkers each year and is the largest municipal health system in the nation. About 70% of its patients have no health insurance or are enrolled in the Medicaid program.
H+H is facing a budget gap estimated at $1.8 billion for Fiscal 2020.
"We will address Health & Hospital's $1.8 billion gap with or without the federal Charity Care cut of $400 million in Fiscal Year 2018," Fuleihan said. "But we're fighting to postpone or eliminate this cut, because supporting public hospitals is vital to the wellbeing of all New Yorkers."
Fuleihan was appointed by the mayor to his current position in 2014. He had previously served for over 30 years in top posts for the New York State Assembly, including as chief fiscal and policy advisor to the Assembly leadership.
