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Interactive Chart: How NYC's $70 Billion Budget Breaks Down
By
Aaron Marks
Published Apr 11, 2013
Modified Apr 11, 2013
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By
Aaron Marks
Published Apr 11, 2013
Modified Apr 11, 2013
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Today in our continuing investigation into the data generated by New York City's government, we're taking a look at the city budget. Based on the report of the City's 2013 budget, we generated these breakdown of how much funding each agency receives. Hover over a section to see how much the agency receives, and click through certain categories to see more detailed breakdowns.
Operating Expenses: $70BB.Click to go down a level, right click to go up. All figures in millions of dollars.
The Department of Education has far and away the biggest budget in the City, receiving a little over $19 billion. A far second and third are the Department of Social Services and Pension Contributions, which receive about $9 billion and $8 billion, respectively.
The lesser-funded departments operate on the extreme other end of the spectrum. Parks and Recreation receives $344 million per year, and the New York Public library, an invaluable treasure, receives a whopping $77 million per year — about four tenths of a percent of what the DOE receives (To be fair, the DOE is a completely different, and larger, beast than the NYPL, but the percentages gives some perspective). These agencies' relatively diminutive budgets are bolstered, however, by non-profits like the Central Park Conservancy and Prospect Park Alliance; according to CPC's website, they provide 85% of Central Park's $45.8 million budget.
The above chart breaks down the City's operating expenses — $70 billion for 2013. The City also has a much smaller capital budget, totaling around $20 billion in 2013. Take a look at the chart below to see how those funds are spent.
Capital Budget: $20BB.Click to go down a level, right click to go up. All figures in millions of dollars.
Takeaways from this chart include highways' capital budget of $954 million, almost three times the amount that is given to mass transit, the $2.1 billion spent on water systems, and the 15% of City Operations budget — $1.3 billion — filed under "Other City Operations." We asked the Independent Budget Office how these dollars broke down, and they gave us the following breakdown:
Total budgeted amounts for categories within “Other” in 2013-2016:
Ferries & Aviation: $228.1m
Housing Authority: $185.4m
Juvenile Justice: $770k
Libraries: $513.7m
Real Property: $22.5m
Social Services: $391.0m
Traffic: $584.0m
Transportation Equipment: $50.0m
Libraries, Traffic and ferries received the most support from these additional funds (Ferries! Yay ferries!) Unfortunately, juvenile delinquents got the short end of the stick, receiving a mere $770,000! Before you cry foul for our youth offenders, consider that this may just verify the trend that we're sending fewer and fewer kids to jail these days. Budget nerds: feel free to point out any other interesting budget facts you think we should note of!
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Aaron Marks
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