Comptroller Lander Launches Tracker for City Spending of $11 Billion in Federal Pandemic Aid

*Reposted from Gotham Gazette. Written by Samar Khurshid  (photo: Office of New York City Comptroller)*

New York City Comptroller Brad Lander on Tuesday unveiled an online dashboard tracking how the city is spending and allocating more than $11 billion in federal stimulus funds. Lander pointed to several deficiencies in the city’s accounting of those funds, with unclear links between the source of funding and expenditures and sparse measures of the outcomes of that spending. He is hoping to work with fellow Democrat Mayor Eric Adams on addressing these issues left behind by the administration of Mayor Bill de Blasio.

The city and its residents are expected to receive as much as $26 billion through the 2026 fiscal year in various forms of direct and indirect federal aid including stimulus checks, unemployment insurance, and federal grants, among others. Lander’s tracker examines city spending starting in the 2023 fiscal year as proposed under Adams’ $98.5 billion preliminary budget proposal for the fiscal year set to begin July 1.

The tracker looks at $11 billion in stimulus funds being spent by New York City government, including about $4 billion in direct aid to the city through the State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds (SLFRF) program and $7 billion from the Education Stabilization Fund awarded in several rounds of stimulus programs earmarked for schools and students. It doesn’t analyze other pots of stimulus funding including more than $7.6 billion in FEMA reimbursements for health care and hospital costs and nearly $2 billion from the federal Coronavirus Relief Fund. 

For entire article visit: https://www.gothamgazette.com/city/11142-comptroller-lander-tracker-nyc…