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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. With us now the chair of the New York City Council Finance Committee, Justin Brannan. Why? Now that it's May, the Council and the mayor are in the home stretch of the budget negotiations for the next fiscal year, which begins on July 1st, and many city services are in play. The Mayor's latest version in their back and forth would spend $114 billion, that would be the total budget, about 4% more than last year in city taxpayer funded costs. It projects better revenue than the mayor earlier said would be coming in. That's good news.

He restored some proposed cuts, including to the police force and early childhood education. Libraries would still be closed on Sundays, though. Some of the new demands on the budget are the loss of federal COVID era aid, implementing a smaller class size law, about a billion dollars more budgeted for asylum seeker services next year, according to the mayor, and other things that we'll ask about. Here is the Mayor last week. We'll get to the mayor's statement last week. Basically, he said he avoided layoffs, avoided raising taxes, and here's the Mayor now.

Mayor Adams: What we did not do is just as important as what we did do. We did not resort to tax hikes, major service cuts, or layoffs. I cannot emphasize this enough. The measures we took worked. Now, thanks to our discipline and prudent approach, we're able to invest in the things that matter to New Yorkers in the executive budget, like public safety, early childhood education, and the needs of working class people.

Brian Lehrer: The mayor last week. Let's see what's in, what's out, what's yet to be negotiated and why the budget is the size that it is with Council Finance Chair, Justin Brannan, whose own district covers Coney Island, Bay Ridge, Bath Beach, Dyker Heights, Gravesend, and Seagate. Council Member Brannan, welcome back to WNYC.

Justin Brannan: Thanks, Brian. I always appreciate being on.

Brian Lehrer: To get wonky with the numbers, to start out, we have very wonk tolerant listenership. I see it would be a $114 billion budget with federal COVID aid expiring. That means the city itself will spend about 4% more than the current fiscal year. If you accept that figure, why does spending need to go up that much?

Justin Brannan: That's a great way to start. I think even for a wonk tolerant audience, it's important to note, because I still hear people that should know better who often bemoan how much the city budget has "ballooned" since whichever year in the past you choose. I think it's important to note that we don't start at zero every year and spend until we run out of ideas. That's just not how the budget works.

It's a very common misconception that is often accepted as true, but it's just false. In reality, New York City is charter mandated to invest the revenue that it takes in. We're required by law to balance the budget. That means that a city budget that grows in proportion to the economy is what you want. The city budget has grown at approximately the same average rate over the past 40 years.

It's our responsibility, then, to invest the resources that are generated by tax revenue back into those city services and programs and infrastructure repair and improvements to public spaces. When we've had very good years, the council has pushed to reduce taxes and we delivered a property tax rebate. Just to start, the hocus trope that the city budget has ballooned due to reckless spending or progressive policies, it's just not accurate. The budget grows as the economy grows.

Brian Lehrer: A conservative would say the whole state budget in Florida, which has 20 million people, is about the same as the city budget here in New York. It's very close, with its 8 million people. The New York State budget is twice as big as Florida's, with about the same number of people. It's so much more city and state spending per person here. Do we get twice as much for our money?

Justin Brannan: I think it depends on who you ask. Certainly, the council, our job is to make sure that people's taxes are being spent wisely and that we're saving where we can. This year in the council's budget response, we're looking to put away a billion dollars towards the reserves. We are not the wasteful spending liberals. That's just not-- People might like to say that, but that's not what we do.

We're really trying to be thoughtful about this. We can be, because against all odds, New York City's, the post-COVID economy has proven to be durable and resilient. Tourism is back, jobs are back, tax revenues continue to outpace projections even as the rest of the state sputters. I think folks who declared New York City dead and buried are editing their epitaph. I think the mayor's recent restorations in the executive budget only represent a fraction of the cuts that he's made to key programs, which the council found was-- they were never necessary in the first place. The cuts were never necessary in the first place.

Brian Lehrer: All right. Let's get into some of the specifics and listeners, any questions on the New York City budget negotiations for City Council Finance Committee Chair Justin Brannan of Brooklyn, 212-433-WNYC, all budget wonk questions welcome here. Also, your pet budget causes, your lobbying of the finance chair welcome here. 212-433-- Sorry, but that's what we do. 212-433-9692, call or text.

One source of new demands on the budget, I assume, will be more teachers and classrooms from the Smaller Class Size Law. Mayor Adams just won two more years of mayoral control of public schools in exchange for a promise to implement that law for real. Again, that presumably means more teachers, more classrooms. Do you have a number for how much that will increase education spending?

Justin Brannan: We saw a $500-plus million in funding for key education programs that the mayor announced in the week before he announced his executive budget. It's certainly a step in the right direction, but it still falls short by more than a quarter of a billion dollars. That's to fully restore the key programs and meet our students' needs. In the council's preliminary budget response, we called for about $550 million in city funding to replace the expiring federal COVID relief funds, which you mentioned before.

I can get deep into the weeds here, but we're talking about restoring the PEGs.

It's $170 million PEG to 3-K and pre-K. There's $25 million for Promise NYC, we're looking for money for special education pre-K for those extended day, extended year seats. Early childhood education is a super, super, super high priority for this council. The restorations we've seen so far are a step in the right direction, but it's not the full loaf. There's much more to do. Based on the council's analysis in our preliminary budget response, there's an estimated $6 billion in available funds that the mayor's budget did not account for.

The mayor's executive budget recognized some of those resources. It came closer to recognizing the additional $3.2 billion in revenues that we forecasted, but there's still about $1 billion dollars that we could allocate right now that's not being allocated. Over the next month, two months of budget negotiations and hearings, we hope to chip away at that, to deliver a budget that is worthy of New Yorkers' support.

Brian Lehrer: By the way, listener, Lauren writes, "Lauren, long time, two time." Thank you for your two calls, Lauren. "Wonk tolerant is us. Thank you, Brian Lehrer Show." There you go. Wonk tolerant listener, glad to be identified as such. You mentioned early childhood. I presume that means pre-K and 3-K. This has been a big point of contention, especially with no full funding of the 3-K program for three-year-olds that mayor de Blasio launched. I want to follow up on your mention of that. Where does that stand now as you see it? A lot of families with two-year-olds and three-year-olds and four-year-olds want to know?

Justin Brannan: That's a great question. I worked for mayor de Blasio in the Department of Education when we were rolling out the early days of UPK. The outreach initiatives that we had were super aggressive. Basically, we converted the fourth floor of Tweed, the DOE headquarters, into the Early Childhood Outreach Campaign Office. To show you how aggressive the outreach was and how unorthodox the outreach was, we tried to find every way possible to connect working families to these newly-created early childhood education seats.

We would get lists from the Department of Health, a list of people who gave birth in the city of New York. We would call them, if it was three years, four years ago, and say, "Hi there, I see that you gave birth and I see that you've got a 3-year-old or a 4-year-old. Would you like a free, high-quality early childhood education seat in the city of New York?" That is the type of outreach that we need to get back to because what we're looking at right now, it's close to 30,000 vacant early childhood seats.

Brian, it's impossible for anyone to believe that there are not 30,000 working families in the city of New York who would not love to have a free, high-quality early childhood seat. We've got to make those connections. The vacancies are there, not because of a lack of interest, but because of a lack of awareness that families don't know that these seats are available to them.

The council right now, we're not focusing on expansion. We want to keep the seats we've got, if there's demand in certain areas, expand it there, but citywide we need to double down on the outreach. We saw some of those-- The mayor committed to some of that in his executive plan, but we need to see more and we need to see it really fleshed out with what that's going to look like, because it needs to be more than just some subway ads. It needs to be a real all-hands-on-deck approach to try to fill those seats.

Brian Lehrer: I mentioned the mayor restoring the police academy classes that would be coming up. Without those classes, the size of the NYPD would've shrunk with normal attrition and retirement. Listener writes, "What were the NYPD increases and what did they do to earn this? Any legislation to have them pay for their own settlements?" Settlements means we know there are millions of dollars that go out from city taxpayers after complaints that wind up in court regarding police misbehavior.

Justin Brannan: Sure. Look, that's always a big issue for us and obviously, in the council, we're very focused on the overtime costs. Me personally, I would rather see us hire more police officers than pay exorbitant amounts and overtime every year, but that's something that for years it's just been a blank check to the police department for overtime costs and we need to get a handle on it.

I think in some ways, the mayor has touched on this in the sense that the St. Patrick's parade happens on the same time every year. That's not an unexpected cost. Things where there are-- Every year it happens at the same time and we need more officers for certain events or whatever it may be. I think that's where we really need to start, but we've been saying this for years and we've yet to see any real plan.

I think you're going to see when we get into hearing starting next week, when we do the public safety hearing and we talk to the police officials, it's going to be a big topic.

Brian Lehrer: Well, a follow-up on that would be that from a different point of view than that listener. New York Post columnist Nicole Gelinas argues that with crime elevated compared to before the pandemic, we should have more police officers because no previous spike in crime has been solved without adding numbers to the NYPD, which, she says, is overstretched.

Of course, council has a progressive contingent that says the city is still over-policed leading to too much negative impact on mostly lower-income Black and Latino people's lives compared to what's necessary for actual public safety. Since you have power as finance committee chair, what's your own view on that?

Justin Brannan: My view is, I think what the overall council view is, is that we can't 'more cops' our way out of every problem. I think even your average cop on the beat would agree with that. I think the police are obviously a critical piece of the public safety puzzle, but they cannot be the only piece, and that's why the council is, is focused on programs to reduce recidivism.

The council's preliminary budget response called for $60 million for programs that reduce recidivism, but the executive budget did not address these. There's justice-involved supported housing, increases to the mayor's Office of Criminal Justice programs, increases to the ATIs, the Alternative To Incarceration programs, community justice centers, something that's very important to the speaker is the Trauma Recovery Centers.

We're really trying to put forward a holistic public safety plan here that, yes, the police are part of it, but they cannot be the only part of it. The police are hired to catch the bad guys, and that's what they need to focus on, but we also have to double down on investments that prevent crime. That's everything from early childhood education to our parks, and that's what the council's focused on, is a real holistic approach.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a phone call. Here is Robin in Long Island City. Robin, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Robin: Hi. Along with the pre-K, shouldn't we be helping out the City University of New York, CUNY? It seems every year the very first place they take money away from is higher ed in the form of CUNY. We've been waiting over a year now for a contract, which happens every year. What is it? Does Mayor Adams and especially Governor Hochul hate higher education? Why is money always taken away from CUNY?

They won't even follow inflation. Shouldn't teachers, professors perhaps, make as much money as sanitation workers? I ask you, why do they hate higher education?

Brian Lehrer: Robin, thank you very much. I'm sure they would say they don't hate higher education, but give Robin and give everybody a little breakdown, if you have it, as to how much CUNY, which is the City University of New York, is funded by the city of New York, you all and city council and the mayor, as opposed to the state.

Justin Brannan: Sure. Look, I agree with Robin. She's preaching to the choir. For every dollar that's invested in CUNY, we get $15 back in New York's long-term economic prospect. In other words, any cuts to CUNY are exponentially harmful for potential economic loss. CUNY has made higher education accessible to New Yorkers of all backgrounds and has been a true stepping stone to economic prosperity, and I think the council-- CUNY is a huge priority for us, and I think now's the time to double down on public higher education and not cut. The issues with staffing, and obviously I'm a huge supporter of PSC and the CUNY staff unions, but it's a collective bargaining issue that we don't have control over except for the bully pulpit, but the council supports CUNY.

Brian Lehrer: Do you have any numbers? She said the spending doesn't even keep up with inflation. Do you have city CUNY budget numbers, like last year compared to this year, anything like that? I realize you can't have every line at your fingertips.

Justin Brannan: I don't have it in front of me, but I'm going to try to pull it up while we're talking.

Brian Lehrer: Kate in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi Kate.

Kate: Hi, there. I think you just spoke a little bit about this, looking at the holistic view, but what is with the problem with looking for politics itself to look ahead to the future? If we look at investing in some of these programs that will help bridge the gap and fix some of the systemic inequality in our city, wouldn't we expect to yield outcomes that would maybe in future need less police? I'm just curious, how much does this budget feel like a pragmatic look at this year and what we're reflecting on as opposed to projecting into the future?

Justin Brannan: Thank you. It's a great question. Certainly, look, the council's priorities are as holistic as it gets. From the mental health priorities, where our preliminary budget response called for over $200 million in mental health services. We called for almost $20 million for supportive housing programs. The council is putting forward that vision that is not-- That makes clear that we're not going to be able to just 'more cops' our way out of every problem, but we need the mayor to agree with us and in the next two months, that's what we're going to fight for.

Brian Lehrer: Kate, thank you. I'm seeing that asylum seeker spending would rise in the new budget as the mayor counts it from about $2 billion to about $3 billion next year. If we assume that that's money that wasn't being spent at all before the current wave began two years ago, where's the extra money coming from? Are other services being cut to the tune of $3 billion to pay for that?

Justin Brannan: Well, what we've been saying all along is that, look, it's very hard to say that we've got an emergency when something's been going on for two years. We should no longer be paying emergency prices. There are myriad nonprofits in the city of New York that do amazing immigration policy work and on-the-ground work for new arrivals. I think those are the folks that we should have been leveraging our relationships with from day one.

When you get a company like DocGo who came in and they had the city over a barrel and they charged us accordingly, but there were other nonprofits and organizations that actually had experience doing this work that I think we should have been working with all along. As long as we're treating new arrivals with dignity and respect, I think finding ways to save money is important and something that we support, but it's something that I think we could have avoided from the beginning. Brian, let me just say, I've pulled up the CUNY numbers. The council called for $344 million for CUNY. The mayor's exec only proposed adding $85 million. There's still a considerable delta there to get CUNY the funding that they need.

Brian Lehrer: All right. Here is a text from a listener that says, "I saw a funny meme that said, "Librarians, wear police uniforms to avoid budget cuts"." That's just the funniest of the many coming in asking if the Sunday closure of the libraries is being restored in the next budget. Not according to the mayor's budget. Is that a priority for you?

Justin Brannan: Absolutely. Libraries, top five priority for us. The executive budget, as you noted, does not reverse the nearly $60 million cut to our city's three library systems. Look, I'm a regular Brooklyn guy who tries to see the city budget the way that any New Yorker does. They see it as, "Hey, is my library open on the weekend? What does this $114 billion budget mean? I can't get a 3-K seat. I can't take my kid to the library on Sunday." This is through the lens that the council sees this budget fight. Libraries are obviously top of mind for us. Restoring full seven-day service is the goal.

Brian Lehrer: Anything I didn't mention that's in your top five that you really want to make sure to get to before we run out of time?

Justin Brannan: I'd say the only other thing is our culturals. The mayor's cultural funding announcement. He restored just $15 million of the $75 million that were cut from cultural institutions from FY24 and FY25. Our cultural economy in the city, it's what makes New York City, New York City. You asked before about the taxes that New Yorkers pay. We're a much more compassionate city than Ron DeSantis in Florida. These are the things that make New York, New York. It's our cultural organizations and they need funding and support from our city. That's also going to be a top priority for us.

Brian Lehrer: In the cultural area, I don't know if that's technically the same bucket, but 1% for parks. That's a constant campaign. Some people promise it then it never happens. 1% for parks.

Justin Brannan: Absolutely. I think the only thing we saw in the mayor's exec budget for parks was some money for rat mitigation. We've got to get parks back the money that they lost. They took 10% PEGs over the past two fiscal years. They're down almost 700 employees. You're going to see that in the summer when the weeds are growing higher than your labradoodle, that's because the parks budget is being cut. We want to get back to zero here. We think we've got more than enough money to restore all these cuts that at least gets us back to zero, and then we can add from there.

The city economy has proven to be durable and resilient. The money is there to restore these cuts. We should not have libraries closed. We should not have overgrowing weeds in the parks. We should not have cuts made to our early childhood education programs, and the money is there. Let's invest it, let's save where we can, and let's pass this budget and we can all go to the beach.

Brian Lehrer: The weeds are as high as the labradoodle's eye [laughter]. One more thing before you go. Last question, and I don't know if you've seen the article in Gothamist yet about this, but I know you're also on the public housing committee. Our local news website Gothamist has a story today that the number of homeless New Yorkers moving into city public housing under the Adams administration has dropped to the lowest number in a decade, even as the volume of empty NYCHA apartments continues to rise.

That's from an analysis that Gothamist did, and they quote Allison Wilke from the Coalition for the Homeless, asking, "Why are we continuing to pay for expensive shelter when there are empty units sitting here?" I'll put that question to you as a public housing committee member and finance committee chair. Why are we?

Justin Brannan: It's a great question, Allison. When we grill the executive leadership at NYCHA at our budget hearing next Tuesday, it's going to be one of our first questions to find out why that is. Why do we have people sleeping on the street or sleeping in shelter when we've got vacant public housing apartments?

Brian Lehrer: All right. Heads up, Gothamist colleagues. Something to do next Tuesday.

Justin Brannan: 9:30 AM. I'll see you there.

Brian Lehrer: Justin Brennan, finance committee chair for the New York City Council. Thank you so much.

Justin Brannan: Thanks, Brian.

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