Hochul Extends Program to Hire Government Workers Faster. Mamdani Opts Out.

New York is extending a program that has filled tens of thousands of government jobs across the state — but New York City, despite facing its own vacancy crisis, is opting out.

Governor Kathy Hochul announced in late June that the program, NY HELPS, would be extended through June 2028, two years past its previous expiration date. The program, which began as an emergency pandemic-era effort, allows state and local governments to hire employees more quickly by waiving civil service exams.

It has worked as intended: State agencies had hired 42,506 workers through NY HELPS through May. City, county and town governments hired an additional 17,667.

New York City tried to opt into NY HELPS in 2024 under Mayor Eric Adams, New York Focus previously reported, but that effort was dropped after city labor unions sued to stop it. Staffing shortfalls remain a big problem under Mayor Zohran Mamdani: The city’s vacancy rate has hovered around 4.5 percent since 2024, and even higher rates in some agencies have hampered city services.

The protracted exam-based hiring process is a major obstacle for agencies trying to fill those shortages. For the 80 percent of city jobs that require an exam, people must apply to take one of more than 100 different tests, often wait years for the relevant agency to schedule an exam, usually pay a fee, then wait another year for the city to release lists of people who did well enough on the exam to apply for jobs. From exam to hire, the process can often take 15 months.

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But the Mamdani administration indicated on Thursday that it will not join NY HELPS, despite the extension.

“We’re here to help ensure city agencies have qualified pools of candidates to hire, and our priority is to modernize the civil service system,” said Dan Kastanis, a spokesperson for the city’s Department of Citywide Administrative Services. He declined to address the city’s short-staffing issues, but added: “We are focused on updating the system for today’s workforce and industries in partnership with labor, city agencies, and other stakeholders.”

Some advocates have called on Mamdani to join the program. The city’s understaffed social services agency has struggled to keep up with applications despite mandatory overtime, as New York Focus reported. A 12 percent vacancy rate in the city’s housing agency has contributed to slower project reviews and increased building costs. The Department of Health and Mental Hygiene blamed its drop in restaurant inspections two years ago on a shortage of inspectors. Even DCAS itself has a 16 percent vacancy rate.

Fifty-two of the 57 counties outside of the city have opted into NY HELPS, as have cities including Albany, Kingston, Troy, and Rochester. The state’s three-person Civil Service Commission approved the two-year extension at a May 13 meeting.

DCAS did not give a rationale for its decision not to join the program. But opting into NY HELPS could risk blowback from city unions like DC37 and the United Federation of Teachers, which are generally allied with the pro-labor mayor and were among the unions that sued to block Adams’s attempt.

“We have thousands of workers already on the civil service list who have taken the exams, who have gone through the process of paying the fee, who have taken all the necessary requirements to qualify,” DC37 executive director Henry Garrido said of NY HELPS at an April City Council hearing. “It’s not fair to those people who have done so.”

City unions largely support the current civil service system, which they say protects merit-based promotions, guards against patronage, and ensures that new hires meet the same standard qualifications: achieving a good score on civil-service exams. Reform advocates, on the other hand, have pointed out that many other cities limit exams to certain agencies, like police and fire.

Mamdani administration officials have predicted that staffing will improve thanks to his February decision to end an Adams-era policy that only lets a position be filled once two employees have left. DCAS Commissioner Yume Kitasei has argued that the vacancy crisis is partly a communication issue.

“The number one issue is the complexity of the system itself and how much New Yorkers actually understand it,” Kitasei said at an April City Council hearing. “That’s a job that we have to tackle — really explaining to the public, not only that this is what civil service is, but also, this is how you get city jobs.”

The state-level Public Employees Federation, which represents about 55,000 state workers, has had mixed feelings about NY HELPS — acknowledging its success in filling vacancies and growing its own membership, while worrying that it could allow unqualified new hires to leapfrog longtime employees.

A PEF spokesperson declined to comment.

One elected PEF representative, who was granted anonymity to describe internal dynamics, said union members have watched with anger as new hires are given promotions thought to “belong” to agency veterans.

“That makes people angry and I’m sympathetic to that,” the person said. “But we also need to hire people. Jobs need to be filled. And if we don’t fill those jobs, the people who are present have to carry the remaining workload, and that can be a real challenge.”