Mayor Adams’ budget boss acknowledges ban on remote work fuels NYC government staffing crisis

New York City government agencies have struggled to attract and retain employees in part because of Mayor Adams’ decision to not allow them to work remotely, his top budget adviser acknowledged Monday.

Testifying before the City Council, Jacques Jiha, the director of Adams’ Office of Management and Budget, said the lack of remote work options for municipal employees isn’t the only reason for the city government’s staffing crisis. But he told the Council it is a factor along with other challenges, including a tight labor market and the city’s since-expired COVID-19 vaccine mandate for the municipal workforce.

“If you take all of these things into account that’s what explains the attrition problem. It’s a major challenge,” Jiha testified at a hearing held by the Council’s Finance Committee.

Last summer, Adams set a strict return-to-work policy for the city’s more than 300,000 municipal workers that prohibited hybrid schedules of any kind. The mayor argued at the time that rolling back remote work would help lift the local economy out of a pandemic downturn, and said scrapping hybrid options in the public sector set the right tone for the city at large.

However, last month Adams’ administration announced a tentative contract deal with DC37, the city’s largest public sector union, that opened the door to allowing some forms of remote work for municipal employees.

At Monday’s hearing, which was held by the Finance Committee to examine Adams’ proposed $102.7 billion budget for next fiscal year, Jiha said the administration acknowledges there has been a problem in workers leaving the public sector or opting to not take jobs in it because of the ban on hybrid schedules.

Jiha was not able to offer a specific number for how many workers have left specifically because of Adams’ anti-hybrid rule, though.

Democratic Council members at the hearing told Jiha that the remote work ban was a mistake and urged the administration to lift it promptly.

“I don’t want the city to be the last one holding on to the return of Monday through Friday, 9 to 5,” said Brooklyn Councilman Justin Brannan, who chairs the Finance Committee. “I think remote work options will go a long way in addressing the high vacancy rates.”

City government-wide, more than 23,000 budgeted positions are sitting vacant, including at key agencies like the Departments of Social Services and Housing Preservation and Development, according to Jiha.

The budget chief said the administration is actively trying to recruit workers, noting that Adams has personally attended city government job fairs to boost participation.

“We are trying our best to be out there in the communities to tell folks: We have 23,000 vacant positions,” he said.

He also said the administration is seeing some positive signs, like the city government onboarding 17,000 new employees in the first seven months of this fiscal year and losing 16,000 — a net gain of 1,000.

Still, Manhattan Councilwoman Gale Brewer told Jiha she does not believe the administration will get a hand on the staffing shortages unless it scraps the remote work restriction.

“People will not work for the city if it is not hybrid,” she said.

City Comptroller Brad Lander, who testified after Jiha, agreed with Brewer.

“Having a hybrid schedule helps a lot in recruitment. That’s what we’re competing against,” Lander said, referring to the private sector.

The deep staff shortages in the municipal ranks appear to be impacting critical public services.

The Department of Social Services — which has more than 2,100 vacancies — is failing to process more than half of all food stamp applications in a timely fashion, resulting in low-income residents going without the safety net benefit, sometimes for months on end, as previously reported by the Daily News.

Meantime, the Department of Housing Preservation of Development, which has more than 400 vacancies, is struggling to ramp up affordable housing production, with Adams’ preliminary management report showing that his administration is falling short of its own construction targets.

Beyond budgeted vacancies, Brooklyn Councilman Lincoln Restler said he’s troubled by proposals in Adams’ budget blueprint to permanently eliminate thousands of vacant positions at nearly all city agencies. He argued such cuts will only exacerbate the city’s struggle to deliver services.

“We are failing because of the mayor’s rigid ideological insistence on shrinking the head count of the City of New York,” said Restler, a Democrat who chairs the Council’s Progressive Caucus.

Jiha pushed back against Restler’s notion and reminded him there are thousands of vacant positions that the city is actively trying to fill despite the head count reduction.

The reason the administration is seeking to slash some jobs boils down to the mayor’s concern about the city’s fiscal health, Jiha said.

“We are in a very difficult situation,” he said, noting that the city’s migrant crisis is costing the administration about $150 million every month while tax revenues are lower than hoped.

The Council and the mayor must reach an agreement on a budget by July 1.

Council Speaker Adrienne Adams (D-Queens), who opened Monday’s hearing, said she has sympathy for the administration’s fiscal concerns, but signaled the Council won’t let the mayor’s first budget proposal stand.

“The COVID-19 pandemic spotlighted the wide and persisting inequities in our city,” she said. “As we move forward, we cannot underfund and understaff the very agencies that have connected New Yorkers with the essential services and organizations that have helped them withstand this crisis.”