Board of Election Commissioners appropriations are cyclical, with expenses rising and falling during election years and off-years. A significant portion of the department's election-year workforce consists of temporary hires, while permanent staff levels stay relatively consistent year-to-year. BoEC appropriations tend to peak every four years in the odd-numbered years preceding Presidential elections, when the city holds municipal elections.

From 2011-2026, BoEC's budget grew at an average rate of 15.3% annually, or 12.9% when adjusted for inflation through 2025, compared to a citywide average rate of 5.5% (inflation-adjusted 3.2%). The current proposal would increase the department's appropriations by 73.9% from the previous year.

Estimated Fringe Costs

City budgets do not break out "fringe" pension and benefit costs for non-grant positions by department, instead grouping them together as citywide expenses under the Finance General section of the budget. To better reflect the real cost of service for departmental operations, BGA Policy has included an estimate of pension and benefit costs for the years 2018-2026, using Department of Finance fringe memos from each relevant year. An estimated fringe cost for the 2027 proposal uses the average annual rate of increase for each of the inputs into the fringe formulae.

Based on the city's fringe formulae, the BoEC fringe cost for nongrant employees averaged 21.4% from 2018-2026, compared to a citywide average of 26.8%.

Local Fund Actual Spend

Over the past four complete budget years for which local fund actuals/encumbrances data is available, BoEC spent on average 61.8% of its locally funded budget, one of the lowest rates of budget spend, compared to a citywide average of 86.6%.

Budgeted Positions & Vacancies

Because BoEC hires temporary staff for election cycles, the budgeted full-time headcount of the office has remained relatively unchanged year-over-year. Slight position cuts over the years have resulted in an average annual rate of change for BoEC's headcount of -0.1% from 2011-2026, the same as the citywide average for the same period.

The current proposal makes no net adjustment to budgeted headcount at BoEC.

From January through September of 2026, the months for which full-time position vacancy data is currently available, BoEC averaged a 17.6% vacancy rate, compared to the citywide average of 11.2%.

12 of the department's budgeted full-time positions were persistent vacancies (defined as the number of positions within the same combination of title, subsection, section, division, department, and fund codes that remained vacant in all nine months of available data):