State comptroller, Syracuse mayor say the city is not “fiscally stressed”

SYRACUSE, N.Y. — The City of Syracuse isn’t considered “fiscally stressed.” That’s according to New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli’s fiscal-stress monitoring system, which gave Syracuse a score of 32.5 percent for 2015.

Local governments with scores beginning at 45 percent have fiscal-stress concerns, according to a document on the comptroller’s website.

It is the third straight year that Syracuse isn’t labeled fiscally stressed, according to a news release that the office of Syracuse Mayor Stephanie Miner issued Monday afternoon.

Miner’s office cited DiNapoli’s data in the release. Both Miner and DiNapoli addressed the findings during a news conference Monday afternoon at Syracuse City Hall.

DiNapoli’s monitoring system uses financial indicators that include year-end fund balance, short-term borrowing, and patterns of operating deficits.

“It’s meant to be an early-warning system, so that if we have a municipality or a school district, [or] a community headed for trouble, we can early on identify what those issues are and hopefully, at the local level, and with some help from the state, avert a full financial or budget collapse,” DiNapoli said in his remarks.

The system creates an overall fiscal-stress score that classifies whether a municipality is in “significant fiscal stress;” in “moderate fiscal stress;” is “susceptible to fiscal stress;” or has “no designation.”

DiNapoli’s office bases the system on a process that DiNapoli’s auditors have been using to detect financial problems in communities, according to a description in the release from Miner’s office.

Syracuse has a “no designation” classification, which is the “most positive designation that you can receive,” Miner said.

Several factors have helped stabilize the city’s finances, including upgrades to bond ratings, diligence in paying off debt, “and other budget decisions,” Miner’s office contended in the release.

Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com