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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. We have New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie coming up on today's show, among other things. We'll start here with the New York state and city budget still stuck on how much to tax the rich. One of the central arguments around that being whether tax rates or private sector unaffordability, which could be alleviated by tax rates, do more to make people leave New York City.

A new report out this week from the watchdog group, the Citizens Budget Commission, found that New York City is losing parts of its population across all income levels and all demographics. The schools are losing students. Around a third of New Yorkers rate their quality of life as excellent or good. That's a third excellent or good. One in four. One in four. A quarter of the city say they're planning to leave within five years. The city is staring down budget gaps in the billions of dollars. The state is also debating its budget right now, which is already about three weeks late. This is one of the central issues.

The commission's answer to the city, cut spending, definitely don't raise taxes in the state that already leads the nation in per capita tax burden. That puts the nonpartisan watchdog group on a direct collision course with Mayor Zohran Mamdani. As you know, he says the only way out of the city's fiscal hole is to make the wealthy pay more. Now, last week, the mayor rolled out a push for a pied-à-terre, I should say the governor rolled out a push for a pied-à-terre tax on wealthy residents' second or additional homes worth $5 million or more. The mayor supported it. That's just one of the tax-the-rich vehicles that they're considering.

We continue now to welcome guests on various sides of that debate, especially as it pertains to leaving the city. With us now is Andrew Rein, president of the Citizens Budget Commission. Andrew, thanks for coming on for this. Welcome back to WNYC.

Andrew Rein: Thank you, Brian, so much. Great to be here.

Brian Lehrer: You told our colleagues at Gothamist that the report showed frustrations with city life "across many racial groups and incomes." Wealthy people, middle-class people, and poorer people are leaving evenly distributed. That might surprise some people who think that this is about whether the wealthy are going to leave and take all those tax dollars. Walk us through the findings. Who's actually leaving?

Andrew Rein: Last year, 114,000 more people left New York City for other parts of the country than came here. That's actually an uptick, a 20% increase over the year before, which is concerning because that's the first time that domestic out-migration has increased since the beginning of the pandemic. It's also disturbing because, of course, we know federal policy has squelched international in-migration, which is the driver of our population growth. Net, it's more important to keep people here and to attract people domestically than it ever has been before, without the international in-migration happening.

When we drilled down, we found out where people went. I just want to recommend that all your listeners go to the Competitive NYC dashboard because you can play to your heart's delight and find out where people are going and what's happening. We found people going to the suburbs in New York and New Jersey and Connecticut, but also Florida, California, Texas, Georgia, North Carolina. When we see the even distribution among income groups, we remember as we look back at our resident survey, when we asked New Yorkers, there was commonalities. People wanted high-quality services. They wanted safe streets, good schools, their trash picked up.

Then there were, of course, specific issues that affected different people. Housing affordability, which everyone's focused on, rightly is a major issue for working and middle-class New Yorkers. Yes, we are the highest tax place in the nation with the highest top marginal personal income tax. That is an issue for very wealthy New Yorkers. We've got to fight on the fronts all across the board as well as serve working New Yorkers.

Brian Lehrer: You're arguing for more and better city services, but also for the city to cut spending on the services they already provide to many people. That won't make sense. How does that make sense?

Andrew Rein: Well, first of all, I just want to commend the mayor on Executive Order 12 and how he talks about excellence and government. If you read the executive order, and I think it's so well articulated, we have to focus our spending on the programs that really deliver for New York. We've got to stop spending on programs that aren't actually adding value to New Yorkers' lives. Frankly, we've seen private sector productivity increase 20% over the last 10 years, and we haven't seen the effort made at all in the public sector.

In the last 10 years, we've added a lot of programs without making them affordable by shrinking programs that don't work or making government more efficient. Our revenues are coming in really so strong. What we have is a spending affordability program problem because we haven't focused on what works. In fact, spending has increased over the last 10 years, $16 billion faster than inflation. If we were sitting here today saying, "Oh, spending's increased 10 billion faster than inflation," we'd say, "Hey, that's pretty good." We'd also say we wouldn't have a budget gap.

That's what we mean about focusing spending, getting in line. Like the mayor's saying, improving the quality and the excellence of those services, that's how we can serve New Yorkers and close the budget gap.

Brian Lehrer: That makes a lot of sense in theory, but I think a lot of critics might say you're raising a perennial red herring. Everyone who wants to cut other people's programs so they can pay less taxes themselves say, "Waste, fraud, and abuse. Waste, fraud, and abuse." There's rarely enough actual waste, fraud, and abuse to make up for all the cuts. What gets cut is the actual services. Why shouldn't we think that would be the result of what you're advocating?

Andrew Rein: There are enough opportunities, and you're right about some of the history, but there are enough opportunities in this budget if we roll up our sleeves to do it. The mayor has talked about it with his chief savings officers and identified some. I just think there's more opportunity; he can be more ambitious. Let's take, for example, the class size mandate that Albany has that we should shrink all the classes sizes around the system.

In fact, it was pretty easy to comply with the first two rounds of that because we'd already done the smart thing in New York City by shrinking class sizes in early grades and high-need schools. That was already done. The next $1.2 billion is really spending money, in part, on popular schools that are high performing. Let's use those dollars more wisely. We increase spending on individual schools when the enrollment grows. Makes a lot of sense. We haven't been shrinking when enrollment shrinks. Now we have 200 schools that are fewer than 200 students. You can save probably $400 million by doing that.

Of course, the mayor is exactly right that we have to deal with our biggest in the nation city-funded FHEPS housing voucher program, which has been growing exponentially. It was the biggest municipal program in the country when we had 15,000 vouchers. We have 65,000 housing vouchers, which is a great component of a comprehensive strategy. If we froze it at 65,000 vouchers, meaning we don't kick anybody off that has vouchers today, we could save $330 million next year and $3 billion over the financial plan.

It is those hard choices and also the rolling up the sleeves by going into each agency and finding each program and saying, "Is it serving New Yorkers? Is it not?" That's where we should have that ambition to improve the quality and efficiency of government.

Brian Lehrer: On CityFHEPS, there you are saying, okay, let's give fewer, poorer people housing vouchers so we don't have to cut taxes on the wealthiest individuals or corporations. Why put the burden there?

Andrew Rein: Just to be clear, and I'm sorry if I wasn't. No, we're not saying cut the vouchers at all. We're saying keep the vouchers--

Brian Lehrer: You're saying cut the growth, right, have the cap?

Andrew Rein: What we're saying is 65,000 voucher holders, if we actually keep their vouchers with rents going up, there's still a significant spending increase each year. We don't want to reduce and take away anybody's vouchers. We're looking forward to the mayor's proposal because, as he came in and deserves a lot of credit for being transparent in the budget and getting rid of the under budgeting, lifting the veil, and showing the problems, he's looking at the same thing as Deputy Mayor Bozorg talked about the other day.

This is a challenge that fundamentally is a federal challenge when it gets to this scale. We've done so much in this city, and we look forward to his proposal. We should be not cutting services for those people, but we have to live within our means so that we can provide all New Yorkers-- I will also say, look at the social safety net we have in New York. We have 11 public hospitals that serve anybody regardless of means of location. We have NYCHA with 165,000 apartments. We are a generous city that, if well run, can serve all New Yorkers so well.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, are you thinking about leaving New York City? The survey that the Citizens Budget Commission released says a quarter, that would be like 2 million people, are thinking of leaving New York in the last five years. Does this apply to you? If you're listening from somewhere else because you recently did leave New York City, call and describe whether taxes had anything to do with it, poor city services had anything to do with it, or ask Andrew Rein from the Citizens Budget Commission a question. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. You can tell a story about yourself. You can tell a story about someone you know, or you can just ask a question. 212-433-WNYC, call or text, 212-433-9692.

Andrew, I see that your stats show Hispanic New Yorkers were the most likely to leave the city from 2022 to 2024. Hispanics are not the wealthiest New Yorkers on average by any means. Does the fact that they lead the pack in departures mean more flight from the city is happening because of high private sector costs like rent and childcare than from high taxes, which wouldn't affect poor people all that much?

Andrew Rein: No, I think you're right to zero in. When we did our residents' survey, Hispanic New Yorkers rated quality of life, quality of life in their neighborhood, and quality of service as the lowest among all groups. Quite disturbing findings. When we look at that in conjunction with those migration numbers, we say we have got to serve these communities better and all New Yorkers better. The quality of services matter. Cost of living matter. Of course, housing costs are important. Of course, childcare costs are important.

We inferentially, looking at the data together, can say this is a real risk, but it also calls upon our leaders who are going to come up with the budget this year, and, of course, the mayor who's going to manage these services, how to focus on the quality as he talks about, because these New Yorkers are saying services aren't good and more of them are leaving. That's not good for our quality of life, our opportunity, and our economy.

Brian Lehrer: I want to get you to talk a little bit before we go to some of our callers and texters about one thing you raised before, and that's the reduction in immigration based on Trump administration policy. I think it's fair to say that one thing that makes New York City different from, say, Detroit or name your Rust Belt city, is that new generations of immigrants constantly flood in here, and they bring renewal. Do you have a position on the Trump immigration restrictions as a budget watchdog and New York lover? I'll give you that credit for sure.

Andrew Rein: [laughs]

Brian Lehrer: Is it bad for the federal budget worker-to-retiree ratio at the federal level for Social Security and Medicare, for example? Is it bad for the ongoing renewal of New York City to cut down on the levels of immigration that have been common since the 1965 Immigration Act until last year?

Andrew Rein: We have no official position on federal immigration policy, but what we do know is that New York's growth/vitality dynamism has, in large part, been fueled for hundreds of years by newcomers to this country, newcomers to New York City, immigration from other places. That has created both vitality in our economy and enriching life for everything. I don't know where music would be if Machito didn't come and Dizzy Gillespie didn't come up with Afro-Cuban jazz.

I mean, this is part of what makes the city great culturally as well as economically. When we look at it right now, and we see the combination of increasing domestic out-migration and decreasing international in-migration, we say this is a real challenge for New York City. We cannot control what we can't control, but we need to focus on making it attractive for a diverse set of New Yorkers.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a phone call. Katherine in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hi, Katherine.

Katherine: Hi, Brian. Hi, everyone. Well, I am going to leave New York. I am 76 years old, live in a six-floor walk-up, and couldn't possibly find an affordable place with an elevator in New York City. I'm thinking I'm going to move probably to Pennsylvania. It's too hard. I still work.

Brian Lehrer: Do you have people there, or are you just looking at cost of living?

Katherine: Yes, I do. I do. I have friends there. I do have friends in Philadelphia.

Brian Lehrer: That's enough. That's one demographic. Woman, 76, still working, she says, but not able to afford even an apartment with an elevator anymore, as she put it. Let's go to Maria in Brooklyn. You're on WNYC. Hi, Maria.

Maria: Hi. Yes, good morning. This pattern of leaving New York City for at least in our area in southwest Brooklyn, we've seen this pattern sort of beginning in the late '90s, as primarily the amount of money that came into this part of Brooklyn, transnational money, also the fact that we were discovered by what is considered gentrification, though that's a tricky terminology because it was really modification, that pure and simple. Just folks with available money, not only transnational, but if they had family money, people were able to put a parent's mortgage in their home to be able to put a down payment for a purchase.

Within three years, between the mid-90s into the 2000s, the local people that had been here, striving one generation after the other to move up the scale, were frozen out of not only the residential market, the ownership, but also out of affordable rentals.

Brian Lehrer: Maria, thank you very much. Where does gentrification, the issue Maria is raising centrally there, fit into your analysis of what makes the city unaffordable enough that a quarter of the people say they're considering leaving?

Andrew Rein: When you look at the dashboard, the most significant piece is to look at what's happening in our housing market and our asking rents. Right now, our asking rents are increasing 3.8% a year, and that's twice as fast as they were increasing before the pandemic. Literally twice as fast. We're at $3,800 a month for asking rents, and that literally is 50% of the median household income, which anybody in the houses in the field know that that's the very definition of extreme rent burden.

We have got to be building so much to bring those housing costs down, provide that availability in the market, but also affordable housing. We have got to make a dent on housing. It's great to see the mayor coming out of the gate using what was passed in the charter reforms that he endorsed with expedited land use review, because we need to build as fast as possible.

Brian Lehrer: Listener texts, "I moved to Ossining in 2016 because I realized it was going to be way too expensive to raise a family in Jackson Heights, where we lived at the time. Rent was the biggest driver, not taxes." Sam in Queens, you're on WNYC. Hi, Sam.

Sam: [chuckles] Hey, Brian. Thanks for picking up on me. I'm thinking about moving out of New York because it's not about money. Like, I've gotten to a point where money isn't like a huge burden for me anymore. I have a three-year-old son, and we live in Ridgewood, Queens. After having a kid, all the little chaotic things of New York that used to be kind of fun and interesting are now a drag.

Brian Lehrer: What do you mean?

Sam: Things like bars with really loud-- What's that?

Brian Lehrer: Go ahead. No, I'm just asking you for examples. You got one there.

Sam: Every day there's cars blasting down my street with extremely loud exhaust, and they're going like 50 miles down my little residential street in Queens. It's just like this doesn't happen elsewhere. I don't want my son to grow up in an environment that just seems kind of threatening. Things like that.

Brian Lehrer: Right. Quality of life in that respect. I'm sure Ridgewood isn't the only place where there are people hot-rodding around. You heard that text, you heard that caller, Andrew. I realize this is a very small, unscientific sample. Nobody is saying Taxes. Make your case that if the city raised taxes that-- I think it's two percentage points on incomes over $1 million, or raise the corporate tax, the four points or so that the mayor wants to do. That's a sales tax in effect, right? It's not a tax on companies being located here.

Supporters of the mayor say that doesn't drive companies out of New York and therefore, drive taxpayers out of New York because if they just sell the products here, even if they're located in Texas or North Dakota, that same tax hike would apply, and Amazon or whoever it is isn't going to stop selling here. There are all these arguments that the tax hike, the two points, won't touch individuals who like living here enough to make the move in a financially meaningful way for the city and the state. The nature of the particular corporate tax increase that's proposed is irrelevant to who lives here anyway.

Andrew Rein: I appreciated Sam's call because he raised, and I'll come to the taxes in a second, the value proposition issue, which is most New Yorker-- For some, it is one thing, but it's usually a mix of things. Quality of life, quality of services, affordability. It's the same with business. It's the mix. Is it worth it? New York will never be cheap, it'll never be easy, but we have so much to offer. The question is, are we chipping away? What we've seen in the dashboard, we're chipping away at our competitive foundation. It's not that something happens tomorrow; it's chipping away.

That goes to your question. We have the highest combined top personal income tax rate in the country, paid by people in New York City, 14.7, I think it's 774% higher than New Jersey, higher than California. As you said before, at the top, we are the top taxers overall in the nation per capita, state, and localities. What we've seen is the number of millionaires in New York City has increased. It's increased, I think it's 84% between 2010 and 2022, the latest data available, but it tripled in the rest of the country. It quadrupled in Florida.

What is it about the capital that it's not the place that's growing wealthiest New Yorkers? Of course, these New Yorkers pay a significant share of our personal income tax that supports teachers, firefighters, sanitation workers, and all the services we all rely on. We're chipping away, and we have a shrinking share of those individuals in New York. Frankly, if the share didn't shrink, we'd have $3 billion more in tax revenue today, which, of course, there are plenty of ideas on how to close. ABC would say let's use that $3 billion and close the budget gap.

We're chipping away at our foundation. Taxes is one piece. To some people, it's a single factor that causes them to make a lifestyle choice. Again, as Sam was saying, it's kind of the value proposition: taxes, quality of life, quality of services. On the business side, I think it's a different-- yes, we have what's a sales nexus. We tax where the sales are, but we are for local businesses increasing their cost of business in a city that they already pay a multitude of taxes because we have a broad range of commercial rent tax, et cetera.

Their employees pay a lot of taxes. When they think about, should I grow here, should my second headquarters or my expansion be in New Jersey, some of their employees are saying, "Oh, can I be in New Jersey? It's easier to find housing there. It'll be lower taxes for me, or they're expanding other places." It chips away at that foundation. It also does send a signal to the business community that we are willing to keep on increasing taxes. That signal, in part, matters. Of course, it's a value proposition. The signal has to be we want to work, and we want businesses to grow here.

Coming back to your original question, we have the opportunity to serve New Yorkers within our current highest taxes in the nation budget, with revenues coming in like gangbusters. If we take that opportunity, we will serve everyone, and we don't actually need to raise our already high taxes.

Brian Lehrer: How much is enough in terms of job growth among the wealthiest New Yorkers, the highest income earners, for those who are employed at wage-paying jobs? For example, I've seen the stats that some of the big Wall Street firms are creating more jobs in other places like Texas than they are here, but they're still growing the number of jobs here. We have a record number of Wall Street jobs. I'm not sure if it was a JPMorgan Chase or Goldman Sachs or the sector in general stat, but the way I saw it described was yes, they're adding more jobs elsewhere, but they're still adding jobs here. In pursuit of enough money to provide universal childcare and other city services, how much is enough?

Andrew Rein: I think you raise, and also on the dashboard, we have jobs data since 2008, with a focus on the last year. What we've seen in the jobs picture in New York is a sluggish 2025, and we're glad to see increase in finance jobs because, of course, these are higher-wage jobs, and it's good to have higher-wage jobs information. What we've seen in other industries in the last year is a decline in the number of jobs, which is really unfortunate when you think of manufacturing, retail, wholesale in the city because those are working people's jobs that we need to be growing.

What we've seen since our pandemic recovery is the growth in jobs has been lower-wage home care jobs, mostly funded by New York State's home care program that it can no longer afford. That's not the strength of a growing economy.

Brian Lehrer: Wait, that's Medicaid. That's a-

Andrew Rein: Yes.

Brian Lehrer: -public program. Again, you're going to cut taxes when the aging population needs more home health care workers that are largely supported by taxes?

Andrew Rein: Well, just to be clear, we're not talking about cutting anybody's taxes. What the state has been talking about is a program that grew from 2 billion to 9 billion and how it can provide the services New Yorkers need in a cost-effective manner.

Brian Lehrer: Or holding taxes down to be more accurate.

Andrew Rein: Yes. Listen, we have a very large home care program, and the key is how do we keep it affordable and how do we serve the right people? The state's made some progress because when the program originated, it was basically virtually open enrollment, and anybody could be eligible, and then they could pay their neighbors, their children, their services. They're trying to tighten that program, and that's the right thing for our dollars. In terms of economic strength, we want to grow private sector jobs that are good-paying jobs for New Yorkers, afford them to live here.

As you raise, in terms of finance, it's great when we have job growth here, and we've seen a multi-decade decline in finance jobs. It was good to see them ticking up. That's welcome. 30% of those people live outside the city, don't pay city income tax. We'd love them to live in the city because more taxes here is better for more services. The question is, how can we be more attractive so when they grow those jobs, they grow more of them here? I don't know how much is enough, but more is better.

Brian Lehrer: We'll continue in a minute with Andrew Rein from the Citizens Budget Commission. Anita in Queens, who I see she and her husband are considering moving. We'll hear why in her case. I also want to bring up some history with you, Andrew, and how ahistorical this moment is. Is this just part of a perennial pattern with New Yorkers coming the next generation or a generation or two down leave and new people keep coming? Is this really different today? We'll talk about that.

Anita, we see you. We'll take more texts. I see the text from somebody spending time in Minneapolis, Memphis, and Atlanta who maybe has an interesting comparison.

Stay with us as we continue with Andrew Rein from the Citizens Budget Commission on whether to raise taxes and why people are leaving New York City.

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC as we continue with Andrew Rein, president of the budget watchdog group, the Citizens Budget Commission, and the study that they released that found that the city, New York City, is losing parts of its population across all income levels and all demographics, and that only around a third of New Yorkers rate their quality of life as excellent or good, and that a quarter, one in four, say they're planning to leave within five years. We're talking about that in terms of quality of life, in terms of the tax debate that's on the table for City Council and the state legislature right now.

With your stories of considering leaving or not, or your critiques of the policies, we've had other guests who advocate for the mayor's position about taxing the rich more. Andrew Rein is on the other side, thinking that would hurt more than it would help. Anita in Queens has a personal relationship to this. Anita, you're on WNYC. Hi.

Anita: Hi. Good morning. My husband and I are definitely planning to leave in the next few years. It just has become too costly. What we're paying out does not match the quality we're getting back. Let me say that property taxes was a big factor, obviously, when we bought a house in Queens compared to Nassau County, where it's outrageous, but things are just creeping up, and we're being squeezed, as the middle class has complained.

Ideologically, I've never had a problem paying a little more for others, but now I don't have access to some of the programs that lower-income folks, not that they have it easy, might have access to. Yet, I'm struggling in similar ways. We are struggling in similar ways. We have six kids. Only one of them live in New York because the others just can't afford to live here. In my community of Laurelton, which is right on the border of Valley Stream, developers are scooping up the houses. They're becoming three and four-family dwellings. There's no parking. It affects the garbage pickup. It affects the quality of life. It's just sadly become much too much.

Brian Lehrer: What do you think would be different on any of those points that you mentioned if you were to move somewhere else? You talked about subsidies or other services that are for poorer people, but not for middle-class people like you. Is that better anywhere else? What do you think would specifically make your life more affordable?

Anita: We're not looking so much for subsidies, but we're looking-- We basically have very little disposable income at this point because we're pouring everything into utilities and the rising cost of property taxes and other things. We definitely are looking to have a better quality of life, to have more space, quieter, calmer. I'm not naive. I know the cost of groceries and other things are similar, but everything--

Our family moved here in the '70s from the projects, like a lot of city workers did. It was a bedroom community. Our family used to call it the boondocks, but now everything is like at our door, and you can't get any peace. You can't get away from anything. You combine that with the cost. If it was still like it was, maybe it would be worth the trade-off. When you combine all of that, it's not enough.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you for your call, and good luck to you and your family. Here's that text I mentioned before the break. Listener writes, "I've been spending time in Minneapolis, Memphis, and the Atlanta area. It's not just that living costs less there, there are also strong cultural, food, and intellectual scenes in those places. New York is not the sole mecca for those things it once was. Virtual communication also increases possibilities." I hear you reacting to that, Andrew. Go ahead.

Andrew Rein: Well, you said before the break, some of this is a normal cycle, of course. On our budget, we have a self-inflicted, as the mayor said, fiscal problem. Part of what's new here is our challenges on domestic out-migration is the economy has changed, and remote work allows people to move further out. A great paper I just read yesterday about that. More places are more attractive, as the person who texted you has said. Culturally, there's a lot more to offer. Our competition is fiercer. Other places have diversified their economies in ways. Look at Texas.

When Texas was oil, and we were financed, it wasn't really a challenge here. Now with Texas growing in finance and people opening up second headquarters or hiring there, we suddenly have some new competition. As we looked at the data, one of the pieces is headquarters of publicly traded companies, between '20 and '25, the number shrank 41 in New York and increased in Florida and Texas, 74 and 69. The economies are diversifying, and so the competition is more fierce. We have to be looking through that lens to make sure that we have a thriving New York and continue to be, frankly, the magnet for talent and the epicenter of opportunity.

Brian Lehrer: More on that historical context. Native New Yorkers have always left in fairly large numbers, right? That was one of your findings. People born here are leaving in fairly large numbers, but the city is an immigrant magnet. Group after group has come, raised kids in often tough surroundings. The next generations, if they make money, move to the suburbs or places with more space. Is today's trend really new, or is it just more of the classic New York pattern?

Andrew Rein: We'll always see the cycle of both immigrants and young people who move to New York because it's a great place. I mean, socially, culturally, economically, opportunity, it's a great place. There are always going to be people who cycle through. Some of that tipping point is making sure that some of them and more of them want to stay here. That's about housing affordability. It's also about the quality of schools.

Think about what's happened in our school enrollment. Overall, in a decade, dropped 109,000. What happened is that traditional public schools dropped 158,000, while charters increased 63,000. There are tens of thousands of families who are making a choice that says something about the quality of our public schools. That's part about keeping New York and New Yorkers.

Brian Lehrer: We're running out of time, but on reduced enrollment. I think that charters versus district public schools is more of an internal New York City debate because charter schools really are public schools too.

Andrew Rein: Certainly.

Brian Lehrer: It's that difference. Once you take both of those things into account, you still have about 100,000 fewer New York City public school kids than you did a few years ago, if I heard your math right. I have a friend who argued recently to me off the air that this could be seen as a good thing. That we talk about overcrowding in the New York City public schools year after year as a bad thing, and that even the out migration in general to some degree, with the demand on housing, the supply and demand not equaling each other, pushing up housing costs all the time.

Maybe if there are fewer people here, the rents would go down, it would be easier to serve all the children in the public schools, and the people who want to live somewhere else will be happy because they live somewhere else. What about that scenario?

Andrew Rein: There's no question. There are different forces. There are puts and takes and all that. Listen, it's allowed us to reduce class sizes. There's less crowding, but on the other side, we literally have 205 schools that have fewer than 200 students each. That's kind of inefficient. We don't get to offer the students everything. Because we haven't wanted to shrink spending with the enrollment, we overfund certain schools and underfund others, so it's not good equity-wise.

There are benefits that allows us to do some of that work, but we have to be smart about it, and we have to be smart about the quality and using all of our space resources, our teachers correctly, our money correctly. There are opportunities. On the other hand, if people are leaving the city, it's not going to have the vibrancy, the growth, the opportunity. It's also saying something about what jobs and where people want to live. When they aren't here, they aren't paying taxes here.

One of the things in the domestic out-migration is a lot of people move to the New York City suburbs. Well, that's fine, except that they don't pay taxes to New York City anymore. We need those dollars to support these great services for all New Yorkers.

Brian Lehrer: Andrew Rein, president of the watchdog group, the Citizens Budget Commission, thanks for sharing your data and thanks for sharing your point of view.

Andrew Rein: Thank you very much for having me.

 

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