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 authorities 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 growing influence of public authorities over state and local financing, coupled with their ability to avoid regulations applicable to government agencies, has led to calls for reform. Some reforms were passed in the Public Authorities Accountability Act of 2005. The New York State Authorities Budget Office, in their 2018 annual report, noted that there were 47 state authorities and 531 local authorities - including 109 IDAs and 292 not-for-profit corporations created locally - that they provided oversight for in New York State. According to this same ABO report, the operating expenses in 2017 for the 47 state authorities was $34.82 billion. Additionally, the 47 state authorities carried a total of $160.4 billion in outstanding debt.
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