A Municipal Assistance Corporation (MAC) was an independent New York State public-benefit corporation created by the State of New York for purposes of providing financing assistance and fiscal oversight of a fiscally-distressed city. Two MACs are explicitly designated under New York law.
Best known is the MAC created for New York City during the 1975 New York City fiscal crisis. The corporation was born of a recommendation made by a special panel composed of Simon H. Rifkind, Felix G. Rohatyn, Richard M. Shinn and Donald B. Smiley. [1] The majority of appointees to the corporation’s board were made by the Governor, initially by New York Governor Hugh Carey. Members of the MAC included Donna Shalala, later the United States Secretary of Health and Human Services. [2] As part of the creation of MAC, the state passed legislation that converted the city’s sales and stock transfer taxes into state taxes. [3] In 2008, having sold almost $10 billion in bonds to keep the city solvent through its worst fiscal crisis, MAC settled its final accounts and voted itself out of existence. [4]
The other MAC was created on July 19, 1995 for the City of Troy. [5] In 2017, it had operating expenses of $50,000, an outstanding debt of $24.45 million, and no reported staff members. [6]
The government of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico is a republican democracy established by the Constitution of Puerto Rico in 1952. Under a system of separation of powers, the government is divided among three branches: the executive, the legislative, and the judicial. As a territory of the United States, the government of Puerto Rico is under the jurisdiction of the federal government of the United States.
Donna Edna Shalala is an American politician and academic who served in the Carter and Clinton administrations, as well as in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2019 to 2021. Shalala is a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which she was awarded in 2008, and, on August 16, 2023, assumed the role of Interim President of The New School, a university in New York City.
The Central Bank of Ireland is the Irish member of the Eurosystem and had been the monetary authority for Ireland from 1943 to 1998, issuing the Irish pound. It is also the country's main financial regulatory authority, and since 2014 has been Ireland's national competent authority within European Banking Supervision.
The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation was formed in November 2001, following the September 11 attacks, to plan the reconstruction of Lower Manhattan and distribute nearly $10 billion in federal funds aimed at rebuilding downtown Manhattan. It is a subsidiary of the Empire State Development Corporation, which is a New York state public-benefit corporation.
Tax increment financing (TIF) is a public financing method that is used as a subsidy for redevelopment, infrastructure, and other community-improvement projects in many countries, including the United States. The original intent of a TIF program is to stimulate private investment in a blighted area that has been designated to be in need of economic revitalization. Similar or related value capture strategies are used around the world.
Empire State Development (ESD) is the umbrella organization for New York's two principal economic development public-benefit corporations, the New York State Urban Development Corporation (UDC) and the New York Job Development Authority (JDA). The New York State Department of Economic Development (DED) is a department of the New York government that has been operationally merged into ESD.
Felix George Rohatyn was an American investment banker and diplomat. He spent most of his career with Lazard, where he brokered numerous large corporate mergers and acquisitions from the 1960s through the 1990s. In 1975, he played a central role in preventing the bankruptcy of New York City as chairman of the Municipal Assistance Corporation and chief negotiator between the city, its labor unions and its creditors.
Immediately after World War II, New York City became known as one of the world's greatest cities. However, after peaking in population in 1950, the city began to feel the effects of suburbanization brought about by new housing communities such as Levittown, a downturn in industry and commerce as businesses left for places where it was cheaper and easier to operate, an increase in crime, and an upturn in its welfare burden, all of which reached a nadir in the city's fiscal crisis of the 1970s, when it barely avoided defaulting on its obligations and declaring bankruptcy.
New York state public-benefit corporations and authorities operate like quasi-private corporations, with boards of directors appointed by elected officials, overseeing both publicly operated and privately operated systems. Public-benefit nonprofit corporations share characteristics with government agencies, but they are exempt from many state and local regulations. Of particular importance, they can issue their own debt, allowing them to bypass limits on state debt contained in the New York State Constitution. This allows public authorities to make potentially risky capital and infrastructure investments without directly putting the credit of New York State or its municipalities on the line. As a result, public authorities have become widely used for financing public works, and they are now responsible for more than 90% of the state's debt.
The United Nations Development Corporation (UNDC) is a public-benefit corporation in the U.S. state of New York that helps the United Nations with its real estate, office space, and development needs. It was created in 1968. The UNDC is permitted to develop and operate real estate only within a prescribed area in the vicinity of the United Nations headquarters in Manhattan. The boundaries of the Development District and other powers of the Corporation are subject to change to the extent provided by additional legislation.
Edward Van Buren Regan was an American politician and public figure from New York State. He was a member of the Republican Party.
The Dormitory Authority of the State of New York provides construction, financing, and allied services which serve the public good of New York State. More specifically, as a New York State public-benefit corporation, DASNY provides services for public and non-proprietary private universities in New York State; for not-for-profit healthcare facilities in the State; and for other New York State-related institutions/purposes. Like other public authorities in New York, DASNY has the flexibility to borrow on behalf of the state through legislative authorization, rather than incurring general obligation debt, which requires voter approval.
Park Ryan Inc. was a municipal bond firm on Wall Street, founded in 1953 by Darragh A. Park Jr. and James Van Pelt Ryan.
Bonds issued by the government of Puerto Rico and its subdivisions are exempt from federal, state, and local taxes. However, unlike other triple tax exempt bonds, Puerto Rican bonds uphold such exemption regardless of where the bond holder resides. This has made Puerto Rican bonds extremely attractive to municipal investors as they may inure from holding a bond issued by a state or municipality different from the one where they reside. This advantage strives from the restriction typically imposed by municipal bonds enjoying triple tax exemption where such exemptions solely apply for bond holders that reside in the state or municipal subdivision that issues them.
The Puerto Rican government-debt crisis was a financial crisis affecting the government of Puerto Rico. The crisis began in 2014 when three major credit agencies downgraded several bond issues by Puerto Rico to "junk status" after the government was unable to demonstrate that it could pay its debt. The downgrades, in turn, prevented the government from selling more bonds in the open market. Unable to obtain the funding to cover its budget imbalance, the government began using its savings to pay its debt while warning that those savings would eventually be exhausted. To prevent such a scenario, the United States Congress enacted a law known as PROMESA, which appointed an oversight board with ultimate control over the Commonwealth's budget. As the PROMESA board began to exert that control, the Puerto Rican government sought to increase revenues and reduce its expenses by increasing taxes while curtailing public services and reducing government pensions. These measures provoked social distrust and unrest, further compounding the crisis. In August 2018, a debt investigation report of the Financial Oversight and management board for Puerto Rico reported the Commonwealth had $74 billion in bond debt and $49 billion in unfunded pension liabilities as of May 2017. Puerto Rico officially exited bankruptcy on March 15, 2022.
The New York City Mayor's Office of Management and Budget (OMB), formerly New York City Office of Management and Budget, is the New York City government's chief financial agency, organized as part of the New York City Mayor's office. OMB staff, under the direction of the Mayor and the Budget Director, assemble and oversee the expense, revenue, and capital budgets for the city. The City of New York funds the activities of approximately 70 agencies with more than 300,000 full-time and full-time equivalent employees.
The Nassau Interim Finance Authority is a New York State public-benefit corporation created to assist Nassau County, a suburban county adjacent to the city of New York on Long Island, emerge from a financial and debt crisis that began in the late 1990s. As of the start of 2022, NIFA, as it is known, was still in place and still supervising Nassau's finances under a control period that resumed in 2011 after a three-year hiatus.
The New York Local Government Assistance Corporation is a New York state public-benefit corporation created in 1990 to issue bonds to decrease the state's reliance on short term loans.
George Sumner Bradford Dana Gould was an American financier and banker. Gould was a member of the board of Municipal Assistance Corporation that was constituted during the 1975 New York City fiscal crisis and briefly served as its chairman in 1979. He was the Undersecretary of the Treasury in the late 1980s during the Reagan administration. During this period he oversaw the savings and loan crisis, the aftermath of the 1987 Black Monday stock market crash, and the raising of the country's debt ceiling.