Contact: Colleen Roche/Curt Ritter (212) 788-2958
"The State Comptroller's report on the state of the City's finances is fundamentally flawed and inaccurate. The City is not using its unprecedented surplus to fuel spending but rather to reduce spending in the out-years. The failure of the Comptroller to recognize the sound fiscal practice of using the $2 billion surplus in FY 1998 to reduce debt service in FY 1999 illustrates the defective nature of the report. Moreover, the City is better prepared than any other governmental entity to weather a stabilization or decline in the economy's performance with the existence of almost $700 million in unallocated reserve funds.
Finally, the Comptroller is directly responsible for causing added stress to the City's budget by advancing and supporting the passage of several costly pension initiatives by the State Legislature that cost the City approximately $125 million in the current fiscal year, with the cost increasing in the out-years. In addition, when legislation passed allowing police officers the ability to have their labor contracts negotiated by the State Public Employees Relations Board (PERB), the City's budget was placed in peril by over $1 billion annually. Yet the State Comptroller played no role in assisting the City with preventing the passage of this costly state mandate, despite his statutory role as Special Deputy Comptroller for the City of New York."