$500 Million in Efficiency Savings for NYC

by Kate Piercy 8,000 vacant desks, nearly 11 percent of the workstations in the city government’s 19 million square feet of office space. Nine separate agencies to handle vehicle maintenance, operating 125 separate maintenance garages, some across the street from each other. Each city agency with its own HR department, with an overall ratio of...

by Kate Piercy

• 8,000 vacant desks, nearly 11 percent of the workstations in the city government’s 19 million square feet of office space.
• Nine separate agencies to handle vehicle maintenance, operating 125 separate maintenance garages, some across the street from each other.
• Each city agency with its own HR department, with an overall ratio of HR workers to employees 2.5 times higher than is typical in the private sector.
• Police officers reporting their hours worked on an error-prone, paper-based system involving pairs of officers driving boxes full of paperwork between precincts and One Police Plaza.

These, among many other findings, is what New York’s newest Deputy Mayor, Stephen Goldsmith, reported after Mayor Michael Bloomberg asked him to find efficiency opportunities in the city’s operations, according the Josh Barro:

Overall, Goldsmith believes that resolving these inefficiencies and others can save the city $500 million over the next four years, all with moves that are close to painless.

Barro thinks NYC should keep looking for efficiencies, and in addition to some easier choices, “many hard choices will also be necessary to make New York City government work for the long term.”

Only so much saving can come from painless cuts in staffing. Unlike in HR, the city cannot cut police, fire or teacher headcount by half without degrading service quality. Instead of cutting staffing, the focus here must be on cutting compensation costs per employee.

The costs of compensation for government workers continue to strain budgets, and until government opens up to more competition, “so agencies are pressured to keep compensation reasonable,” government budget deficits will not go away.

For more from Barro’s piece and specific savings and efficiency examples, check it out here.