A few months into its third full fiscal year since the pandemic’s start, New York City’s finances have never looked so flush — and, at the same time, so precarious.
That decidedly mixed message was the main takeaway of Tuesday’s annual meeting of the state Financial Control Board.
Chaired by the governor, with other ex-officio members including the mayor and both city and state comptrollers, the board is a legacy of the city’s brush with bankruptcy in the 1970s. Although its actual “control” of city finances ended in the early 1980s, state law still requires the board to certify that the city budget is balanced under general accounting principles (a more stringent requirement than the state imposes on itself), with no delayed debt payments, deficit borrowing or other fiscal funny business.