Group Claims City Government Has Ballooned Under De Blasio; Mayor's Office Fires Back
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- The Citizens Budget Commission claimed in a new report that the size of city government has ballooned under Mayor Bill de Blasio.
The mayor has hired an additional 25,000 employees since taking office at the dawn of 2014, the group said.
That is about an 8.4 percent jump in the number of people collecting city paychecks.
About a third of the new jobs are in the Department of Education, which added 6,275 positions. The NYPD added just over 3,000.
Watchdogs said the added workers could pose a long-term fiscal problem for the city.
The Mayor's office fired back at the commission – pointing out that its report counted much more than just jobs funded by city taxpayers. Spokeswoman Karen Hinton said in a statement that if the group had only counted jobs funded by New York City taxpayer funds, the increase would be only 6.5 percent.
She said that increase over a three-year period is "a reasonable amount of growth."
But the commission instead also counted jobs funded by state and federal sources, and Hinton said using state and federal grants to create jobs was an "efficient use."
The Mayor's office also criticized the commission for comparing the 2014 actual headcount to the 2017 projection.
"That's apples to oranges," Hinton said in the statement. "A fairer comparison is 2014 actuals to 2016 actuals."
