Crossing guards remain in NYPD budget this year, despite claims of $1B cut
School crossing guards are still in the NYPD’s budget this year despite statements from the mayor and Council speaker that they were transferred out as part of an overture to criminal justice advocates.
In announcing the $88.2 billion budget last week, Mayor Bill de Blasio said the spending plan included $1 billion worth of cuts to the police department, a nod to protesters and advocacy groups who had called for at least that much to be nixed from the agency and spent on social services instead.
POLITICO first reported Thursday that school safety agents will remain NYPD employees for the fiscal year, despite making up $307.5 million of the announced cut.
Also included included in the mayor’s 10-figure claim was a $42.4 million reduction from moving the school crossing guard program out of the NYPD, according to a press release issued by City Hall last month.
Yet budget documents show the switch never happened. Nearly 100 full-time school crossing guards that were employed by the department last year appear again in the NYPD’s current spending plan. And the mayor’s office confirmed that more than 2,000 guards who work part-time remained under the police department in the spending plan.
The administration said it plans to move the crossing guards to another agency once the budget undergoes its first mid-year alteration in November.
“We are committed to a transition for school crossing guards this year, and this change will be reflected in the budget once the details are finalized with our labor partners,” mayoral spokesperson Laura Feyer said in a statement.
No mention was made of the delay when the mayor first announced the $1 billion cuts.
“We had to make sure that we were really doing something to refocus resources on young people and on communities hardest hit, that we were reinvesting in ways that would help us address a lot of the root causes of the problems we face,” the mayor said while announcing a budget deal June 30. “I am confident that this budget does exactly that — $1 billion is shifted away from the NYPD in a variety of manners.”
Council Speaker Corey Johnson, who negotiated the budget with the mayor, similarly said that the crossing guards would be removed from the NYPD when announcing the budget deal in a separate press release.
Johnson’s office affirmed that under its agreement with City Hall, the guards would be moved later this year.
“The mayor has said publicly and privately to the Council that he is moving crossing guards in this year’s budget,” Council spokesperson Jennifer Fermino said in a statement. “We hold him to his word.”
However, $42.4 million is the annual budget for the crossing guard program. So even if the shift happens in November, much of that money will have already been spent.
De Blasio’s $1 billion claim has quickly fallen apart in the week since the budget was passed.
Aside from school safety agents and crossing guards, more than a third of the $1 billion cut touted by the mayor is supposed to come from a $350 million reduction in overtime at the NYPD, a decline of more than 50 percent. Fiscal watchdogs at the Citizens Budget Commission have suggested that figure is largely aspirational — the department routinely exceeds its budgeted overtime allotment and last year accounted for 44 percent of all overtime in the city. The commission and other officials noted this week that the reduction is only budgeted for one year.
After the current budget cycle ends next summer, overtime costs more than double again to north of $600 million, according to stats from the comptroller’s office.
“The budget ‘cuts’ overtime by 60 percent for [fiscal year] 2021, but at the same time, there is no cut in the overtime budget in subsequent years,” City Comptroller Scott Stringer said in a statement. “The mayor is either admitting this year’s overtime cuts aren’t real, or trying to pull the wool over New Yorkers’ eyes.”
The mayor’s office said that it will be monitoring progress over the course of this year and will then make appropriate targets for out-years when next year’s preliminary budget plan is due in January. The Council, however, said that was not part of the pact.
“We didn’t agree to a deal that cuts overtime for one year. That’s ridiculous,” Fermino said in a statement. "[The Office of Management and Budget] needs to update their financial documents.”
Advocacy groups such as Communities United for Police Reform and progressive elected officials including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez were already critical of the cuts even before they were finalized, saying that shifting functions such as school safety to a different agency did not amount to a real reduction.
Not only did the education department already pay the police department for the bulk of the safety program, but fringe benefits being counted by the mayor never came out of the NYPD’s budget to begin with, something Johnson admitted before his colleagues approved the budget July 1.