Nepotism is fine - as long as you keep it in the family

Bill DeBlasio needs to clean house. From Politico:

With opaque budget and elusive metrics, $850M ThriveNYC program attempts a reset
Since its inception in 2015, ThriveNYC — the city's sprawling $850 million initiative to address a variety of mental health issues — has operated without much scrutiny or accountability.

With few public metrics by which to measure its success so far, and the broad strokes used by city officials to describe its operations, the city has offered little insight into how it has assessed Thrive's efficacy since it began.

And because Thrive encompasses a variety of initiatives — some new, some already in existence — across more than a dozen agencies, it is difficult to establish a central, line-item budget delineating how the city is spending taxpayer dollars on the program.

POLITICO spoke to more than 16 people, including elected officials, advocates, representatives of community organizations, researchers and consultants who said that although it is crucial for the city to invest in mental health resources, they did not know whether Thrive was successful and said the city has an obligation to publicize its numbers and how it compares to the goals it set out to accomplish. Some requested anonymity for fear of retaliation while others were more vocal in their critiques.

And the next sentence sums everything up perfectly and ties a pretty bow on the top of its pointy little head:

Run by the mayor’s wife and closest adviser, Chirlane McCray

And a bit more:

POLITICO filed a records request for the program's line-item budget in October 2018, but the city has twice requested an extension. Two budget breakdowns acquired by POLITICO — one from City Hall and one from the Independent Budget Office — show significant differences in spending.

If this was a real business, they would be able to walk over to a computer and generate a P&L statement with a few keystrokes. Printing out the complete COA would be a bit more involved but nothing that would require an extension. Who is in charge of oversight and who do they report to? The director's husband? Much more at the site - well worth reading.