Testimony submitted by Gregory J. Morris, Chief Executive Officer of New York City Employment & Training Coalition on June 26, 2026.
I appreciate the opportunity to testify at this oversight hearing on implementation of the 2024 Green Economy Action Plan. At a time when federal support for climate has retreated, it is all the more important for city stakeholders to ensure that every resource we have at the local level is integrated as effectively as possible to deliver not only climate solutions but also our affordability and public service delivery goals.
To that end, NYCETC recently released An Affordable Climate Economy: Developing the Workforce that Can Deliver a Greener, More Sustainable City, a report on how to ensure our vital climate goals are front and center—and part of the path—to delivering an affordable, growing, and effective city. In it, we outline a number of actions stakeholders across the city can take to realize the green economy’s job and economic growth potential.
I would like to focus my testimony today on two of these items: first, making the City government an anchor employer in the green economy; and second, implementing a Full-Cycle Model of Green Workforce Development.
First, commitment. The City government is the anchor employer in the green economy. The GEAP largely de-emphasized the role of the public sector. But delivering greenspace, mass transit, distributed energy resources, and more dense development—functions that sit largely, if not exclusively, in the public sector—provides a single opportunity to simultaneously advance climate action, improve public services, and increase affordability. The City’s own workforce must therefore be at the center of any green economy and workforce strategy.
Second, execution. Particularly as many key municipal agencies face major vacancies, we have a tremendous opportunity for City government to model effective workforce practices through a Full-Cycle Model of Green Workforce Development.
In this model, City government itself is the proving ground for every workforce practice we are asking private green employers to adopt. The model spans a New Yorker’s full trajectory: career exploration through expanded agency tours of railyards, treatment plants, municipal offices, and power stations starting in early high school; career preparation through mid-high-school internships and work-experience placements at the Department of Environmental Protection, Department of Parks and Recreation, Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Department of Transportation, and Department of Sanitation; career access through targeted civil service reform—more frequent exams, clearer trainee pathways, transparent timelines—for a defined set of climate-critical titles, without touching civil service protections; career launch through end-of-high-school apprenticeships at city agencies carrying CUNY credit; and career advancement through the same business-as-service infrastructure described above, applied internally. If this model can work inside the City’s own famously slow hiring bureaucracy, it becomes the most credible, battle-tested template we have for scaling the private green economy—because it will have been proven on the hardest case first.
The green economy provides an opportunity for New York to demonstrate an effective local model of workforce development that delivers opportunity, affordability, and a cleaner, more resilient city for New Yorkers, especially within the city government’s own workforce.
We urge the Council and Administration to work with key agencies and the Department of Citywide Administrative Services to serve as demonstration agencies of this Full-Cycle Model of Green Workforce Development by expanding career exposure, strengthening work-based learning opportunities, increasing exam frequency, and creating more transparent pathways into climate-critical civil service titles.
Additional Resources
Read our Policy Memorandum submitted to the New York City Council’s Committees on Workforce Development and Economic Development.