NYC comptroller's report aids in budget understanding

New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer on Tuesday released the Popular Annual Financial Report for fiscal year 2018, a transparency guide that helps average residents understand the city budget.

The PAFR is a complementary guide to the city’s more detailed Comprehensive Annual Financial Report. It presents data on the budget, capital projects, revenues and expenses in a format that includes graphs, charts and images to help everyday New Yorkers easily understand what’s in the city’s almost $90 billion budget.

"The budget impacts everyone in New York City, which is why we work to make these critical numbers as accessible as possible," Stringer said. "We started this PAFR report just four years ago and it's become an indispensable part of our budget reporting"

The three previous reports have received the award for outstanding achievement in popular annual financial reporting from the Government Finance Officers Association.

The PAFR was released this year with an interactive, companion webpage designed to make it easier to look at year-by-year budget comparisons. It explains the city budget process while putting budgetary and accounting terms into plain language.

The majority of the data in the PAFR comes from the comptroller's CAFR which was released at the end of October.

As of June 30, the city’s outstanding general obligation bonds, the TFA’s future tax secured debt, and the water authority’s debt together totaled $103.84 billion. Moody's Investors Service rates the city's GOs Aa2, while S&P Global Ratings and Fitch Ratings assign AA ratings to the city’s GOs. All three agencies maintain stable outlooks on the credit.

The PAFR highlights that: the city added 76,600 private-sector jobs, a gain of 2.0%; the unemployment rate fell to 4.3%, the lowest rate on record; the labor-force participation rate rose to a record high of 60.9%; and the employment-to-population ratio rose to 58.3%, the highest on record.

The report also includes city-to-city comparisons.

The PAFR found for 2017, the most recent comparison available, that New York City had 62.8 million tourists, outpacing Chicago, which had 55.2 million, and Philadelphia, which had 43.3 million.

“With New Yorkers more engaged in local government than ever before, I encourage all New Yorkers to take a look – because our city is complex, large, and these numbers affect all of our day-to-day lives,” Stringer said.