The Fund committed approximately $300 million to Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners IV, a European investment fund that will focus on investments in renewable assets including onshore and offshore wind and solar, as well as climate infrastructure assets that support renewable power.
Additionally, the Fund committed $100 million to Excelsior Renewable Energy Investment Fund I, a North American-focused investment fund that will target investments in renewable power assets such as solar and wind.
Publication Date: 20 April 2021
Publication Site: Office of the NY State Comptroller
The commitments are part of New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli’s climate action plan to lower investment risks from climate change and help shift the pension fund to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions within the next 20 years.
New York’s state pension fund is restricting investment in six Canadian oil sands companies because they have not shown they are prepared for a transition to a low-carbon future, the fund’s Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said on Monday.
The New York State Common Retirement Fund will divest more than $7 million in securities already held in the companies, and not make any further investments in them, DiNapoli said in a statement.
Canada’s oil sands hold the world’s third-largest crude reserves and have some of the highest emissions intensity per barrel, due to the carbon-intensive production process of extracting tar-like bitumen from the ground.
Subway turnstile data published by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) shows a correlation between median household income and subway ridership. Neighborhoods with lower median household incomes tended to have significantly higher ridership as a share of 2019 levels compared to wealthier neighborhoods. This trend was clear not only in April, when COVID-19 had its most dramatic impact on ridership, but has continued through the recovery to date.
In high-income neighborhoods, residents are more likely to be employed in sectors that have easily adapted to remote-work models, such as financial activities and business services. In neighborhoods where residents are more likely to continue using the subway during the pandemic, common areas of employment are the health care and social assistance sector and the leisure and hospitality sector.
Author(s): Thomas DiNapoli
Date Accessed: 28 March 2021
Publication Site: Office of New York State Comptroller
The average bonus paid to employees in New York City’s securities industry grew by 10 percent in 2020 to $184,000, in line with the city’s most recent 9.9 percent projection, likely allowing the city to meet or exceed its income tax revenue projections in FY2021, according to annual estimates released today by New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli.
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As a major source of revenue, DiNapoli estimates that the securities industry accounted for 18 percent ($15.1 billion) of state tax collections in state fiscal year (SFY) 2020 and 6 percent ($3.9 billion) of city tax collections in city fiscal year (CFY) 2020.
Pretax profits in 2020 for the broker/dealer operations of New York Stock Exchange member firms (the traditional measure of securities industry profits) increased by 81 percent to $50.9 billion. It was the fifth consecutive year of growth in profits, which are up 256 percent since 2015. Profitability in 2020 was the second highest on record, trailing $61.4 billion recorded in 2009.
Author(s): Thomas DiNapoli
Publication Date: 26 March 2021
Publication Site: Office of New York State Comptroller
As Governor Cuomo already has pointed out on the state level, the federal stimulus aid amounts to “the ultimate one shot . . . a sugar high.” The highest priority of state and local officials should be to avoid plowing the federal money into recurring spending commitments that will create bigger budget deficits in the future.
In an ideal world, New York pols will embark on a careful, painstaking assessment of needs, weighing short-term relief against recurring long-term benefits. Since most upstate cities are very old, with crumbling physical infrastructures, they would be well advised to invest the bulk of their “Biden bucks” into streets, sidewalks, water and sewer systems. This will save money on maintenance costs—which are high in many of these places. It also will help these cities retain and attract business activity they cannot afford to lose—and were already losing before the pandemic.
Local governments could also consider ways to help small local retail businesses and their landlords, especially restaurants and entertainment venues, which were crushed by the pandemic. One way of doing this might be a property tax holiday, or a long-overdue assessment and equalization update, whose transitional costs could be covered by the federal money.
New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli today said there are some positive developments for the state’s fiscal recovery from the pandemic, including higher than expected personal income tax collections and the prospect of significant aid from the federal government, in his review of the Executive Budget for State Fiscal Year (SFY) 2021-22, as amended by the Governor. However, risks remain and could threaten the state’s fragile improvement.
DiNapoli urged the Governor and the Legislature to avoid short-sighted choices when adopting the new budget, to maintain transparency and include oversight measures. He recommended that actions be taken to address the state’s long-term structural imbalance and put the state’s finances on a sustainable path once emergency federal aid ends.
Author(s): Thomas DiNapoli
Publication Date: 2 March 2021
Publication Site: Office of the New York State Comptroller
The New York State Common Retirement Fund (Fund) has reached agreements with five major U.S. companies, including Domino’s Pizza Inc., to set targets to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), adopt new energy efficiency measures and increase their use of renewable energy, New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli, trustee of the Fund, announced today. In response to the agreements, the Fund withdrew the shareholder resolutions with the companies.
“More and more companies understand that addressing climate change, by reducing their carbon emissions, helps their long-term success and benefits investors,” DiNapoli said. “The transition to a low carbon future and meeting our country’s renewed commitment to the Paris Agreement present enormous opportunities for smart, sustainable investments. My thanks to these companies for recognizing their role in building a lower-carbon economy and their responsibility to shareholders’ concerns about climate risk.”
Author(s): Thomas DiNapoli
Publication Date: 4 March 2021
Publication Site: Office of the New York State Comptroller
Immediately before the pandemic hit New York, for weeks ending in late February and early March 2020, statewide UI claims averaged around 167,000. Those claims almost doubled to over 314,000, as the shutdown went into effect, starting a weeks-long upward spike that reached more than 3.1 million in mid-May. The historic peak of nearly 3.4 million claimants came in the last week of May 2020. The totals from May onward include claimants under the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program (PUA) which provides benefits to individuals not traditionally eligible for unemployment assistance because of self-employment or certain other reasons. (Due to the PUA and other factors, the numbers of workers claiming unemployment benefits differ from the count of those officially counted as unemployed, which peaked in New York State at 1.5 million or 15.9 percent of the labor force in July 2020.)
The longstanding, regular State program of UI benefits funded by employer contributions was the only source of benefits for the first six weeks shown in the graph and continued to fund the largest numbers of claims into early August. (These payments were supplemented by additional federally funded benefits of $600 or $300 weekly for much, though not all, of the period shown.)
Author(s): Thomas DiNapoli
Publication Date: 4 March 2021
Publication Site: Office of the New York Comproller
In 2019, New York City’s arts, entertainment and recreation sector employed 93,500 people in 6,250 establishments. These jobs had an average salary of $79,300 and generated $7.4 billion in total wages.
In 2019, 128,400 residents (including nearly 31,000 self-employed residents) drew their primary source of earnings from the arts, entertainment and recreation sector.
From 2009 to 2019, employment in the sector grew by 42 percent, faster than the 30 percent rate for total private sector employment. Establishments and total wages in the sector also grew faster than all establishments and wages citywide.
As of December 2020, arts, entertainment and recreation employment declined by 66 percent from one year earlier, the largest decline among the City’s economic sectors.
The Chelsea/Clinton/Midtown Manhattan Business District neighborhood, home to 1,921 venues, accounted for 46 percent of all jobs in the sector, far more than any other City neighborhood.
Publication Date: February 2021
Publication Site: Office of the New York State Comptroller
New York City’s five pension systems have bounced back from a 4.4% return for fiscal year 2020 that missed an actuarial target of 7%, to return roughly 18% in the first seven months of fiscal year 2021, according to a report from New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli.
Since fiscal 2012, the pension funds, which had approximately $239.8 billion in assets under management (AUM) as of November, have earned an average of 7.5% annually on their investments.
According to the Comptroller Office’s Review of the Financial Plan of the City of New York, pension contributions have stabilized after growing rapidly for many years, mainly due to higher-than-expected investment returns and savings from lower-cost pension plans enacted for employees hired after March 2012. However, the contributions are still forecast to total $10.1 billion in fiscal 2022.
The New York State Common Retirement Fund, the third-largest U.S. public plan, said it’s pressing companies to boost their ethnic and gender diversity, and will vote against directors who fail to act.
“Companies must root out racial inequality, just as they would root any other systemic problem that puts their long-term success at risk,” New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli said in a statement Thursday. “Corporate America must join in the national reckoning over racial injustice and confront institutionalized racism.”
The New York pension, which has $248 billion of assets, plans to file shareholder proposals supporting increased diversity on corporate boards. It also will seek better disclosures about the gender and ethnic breakdown of companies’ employees. The fund said it will vote against board members who ignore these requests.
