Department of Finance – BGA Policy 2027 Budget Snapshot

From 2012-2026, DoF's budget grew at an average rate of 4.9% annually, or 2.6% adjusted for inflation through 2025, compared to a citywide average rate of 5.5% (inflation-adjusted 3.2%). The current proposal would increase the department's appropriations by 37.1% from the previous year, the largest proportional increase of any department other than the election-year Board of Election Commissioners increase.

City budgets do not break out "fringe" pension and benefit costs for non-grant positions by department, instead grouping them together as citywide expenses under the Finance General section of the budget. To better reflect the real cost of service for departmental operations, BGA Policy has included an estimate of pension and benefit costs for the years 2018-2026, using Department of Finance fringe memos from each relevant year. An estimated fringe cost for the 2027 proposal uses the average annual rate of increase for each of the inputs into the fringe formulae.

Based on the city's fringe formulae, the DoF fringe cost for nongrant employees averaged 27.8%% from 2018-2026, compared to a citywide average of 26.8%.

Over the past four complete budget years for which local fund actuals/encumbrances data is available, DoF spent on average 86.5% of its locally funded budget, almost exactly in line with the citywide average 86.6% local fund spend.

Staffing levels at DoF have remained relatively stable since the 2012 budget, with minor year-over-year increases and decreases averaging out to an annual rate of change of less than 0.5%. This year's proposal adds a net five positions/FTEs, a 0.8% increase over the previous year.

From January through September of 2026, the months for which full-time position vacancy data is currently available, DoF averaged a 10.4% vacancy rate, compared to the citywide average of 11.2%.

25 of the department's budgeted full-time positions were persistent vacancies (defined as the number of positions within the same combination of title, subsection, section, division, department, and fund codes that remained vacant in all nine months of available data):